Dirty, Rotten Liberals, part 2

We have 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents, and 32 great great great grandparents.  Now that's a big roomful of interesting folks, and all with unique individual stories.     Those of us who have done much research of our family history have probably developed a fondness for one particular ancestor over the others at least that's been the case with me.   If there was any one ancestor I'd like to be able to go back in time and spend a day with it would be one of my great great great grandfathers, William Walter Robinson.  Bill Robinson was one of those dirty, rotten liberals I spoke of in my prior post.

William W. and Matilda Robinson circa 1847

He and his younger brother John Robinson were willing to take a stand against slavery during a time in our history when men (and women) like them were considered "radical".  Both men came to Tippecanoe County among the very earliest settlers.  William was born in eastern Pennsylvania in 1794, but came west as an infant with his family, first to Kentucky and then to Ohio where he grew up.  John was born in Clark County Ohio in 1806.

William was the oldest son in a family of six sons, and eight daughters.   He left Clark County within a year of his 1818 marriage in Clark County for the wilds of central Indiana. He moved into the area even before the government had finished surveying the land in preparation for sale.   He had begun his own family while still living in Clark County and by 1820 he had purchased government land in what later became Johnson County Indiana.  There he cleared his land, farmed, and became involved in local politics, being elected as one of the first members of the county Board of Justices.  The duties of the Boards of Justice were a sort of blend of what today would be the County Commissioners and a Justice of the Peace.   By 1830 he had moved his family north and west of the Wabash River into what was then the brand new Tippecanoe County where he settled down for the remainder of his life.  

Younger brother John married in Clark County Ohio in 1829 and soon joined his older brother in Tippecanoe County where he purchased farm land about a half mile from his brother's farm.  Several other siblings of William and John also arrived in Tippecanoe County around 1830, but within a decade they had all moved on...farther west and northwest. Youngest brother Lemuel eventually made it all the way to California.     The Robinson's were active in the early days of the Methodist Episcopal Church.  William and his wife were among the members of the first Methodist Church in Johnson County and William was one of the first Trustees of a Methodist congregation founded in their Tippecanoe County neighborhood in the 1840's.

In 1835 John was licensed to become a "local preacher" of the M. E. Church, a position he held for about eight years.   John left the M. E. Church and joined the Wesleyan Methodist soon after that group was formed in 1843 because the M. E. Church failed to take a strong stand against slavery. In addition to Anti-slavery, the early Wesleyan Methodists championed the rights of women.  In 1848 they hosted the first women's rights convention and later passed a resolution favoring the right of women to vote.  Both  anti-slavery and women's rights were far outside conventional (conservative) views at the time.

William never left the Methodist Episcopal fold, but was none-the-less involved in the anti-slavery movement, and was a champion of women's rights, and in particular a champion of education for his children, including his daughters.  

During the 1830's, abolitionists were often characterized as misfits and crackpots. Few took them seriously. Mobs, sometimes led by "gentlemen of property and standing" in the community, inflicted abuse and injury on abolitionists across the north. The violence culminated in Alton, IL in Noveber 1837 when abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy was shot and killed while defending his press from an unruly crowd. He was killed at the height of anti abolitionist sentiment and from that time forward there was a sharp drop in the number and intensity of mob violence, though it never entirely disappeared. Even in Lafayette mob violence was noted against known abolitionists. In 1845 a mob threatened to burn the house of Dr. Elizur Deming who was then a candidate for Governor on the Liberty Party Ticket and also that of Lewis Falley Sr. who was known to harbor runaway slaves in his home on South 5th Street. The mob was diverted from both of those places by the Sheriff and local militia but did burn the homes of several free blacks who lived near the river on the south side of town.

 In short, during the thirty years leading up to the Civil War, it was dangerous to be an abolitionist. William Robinson a friend of Dr. Deming was also a member of the Liberty Party of Indiana and his name appears in several local news items covering local Liberty Party events. It is not known if John was involved in Liberty Party politics but his pulpit gave him opportunity to preach against the sin of slavery. He was also remembered in his obituary as having been a participant in the Underground Railroad, helping runaway slaves escape to Canada. It is unknown if the two brothers worked together in those efforts but since their farms were side by side it seems likely that there was at least some mutual cooperation. Lewis Falley junior was interviewed in about 1900 and remembered  John Robinson often came to his father's home in Lafayette and picked up runaways hiding at the Falley home then taking them north to the county line. A map published in 1898 by Wilber Siebert in his history of the Underground Railroad was one that was sketched by Lewis Falley Senior and clearly shows the Robinson Farm as the first stop north of Lafayette.  

While being an abolitionist, or being a member of the Liberty Party were not against the law, assisting or hiding runaway slaves were certainly against the law, and could result in either criminal charges or civil suits brought by the "owners" of the fugitive slaves.  Many people, even among abolitionists, refused to help fugitive slaves because they either did not want to be law breakers, or they didn't see the Underground Railroad as a viable solution to the problem.  Clearly William and John Robinson were not afraid of upsetting the apple cart, they valued freedom, not just for themselves, but for all.  

William and Matilda were progressives who valued education for all of their children, not just their sons.   At a time when education beyond the very basic for women was not believed necessary they sent both daughters and sons away for higher education.  Two of their sons graduated from Indiana Asbury College, and became Methodist ministers and one became a college president.  At least one of their daughters graduated from Fort Wayne College where she was later a teacher but several of the other girls also attended Fort Wayne College for at least one term.   

Today William might be referred to as a liberal statist...  unlike Ronald Reagan, William W. Robinson didn't see the government as the problem, but instead as a way to solve problems. He saw government simply as neighbors working together toward a common goal.    He was active in community affairs, holding public office as a young man in Johnson County and working with local government officials in Tippecanoe County to build the new community. He signed petitions for improvements to roads and bridges, petitions against selling alcohol in his township, worked with his neighbors building and improving the local roads, paid taxes, paid his debts, raised a large family and worked his larger than average farm.  He sought to eliminate slavery through political action.   Liberty and individual freedom are our birthright, but truly wise men, such as William and John Robinson, know that along with liberty we also need a sense of community to thrive.  William and John Robinson would have found the philosophy of Ayn Rand describing selfishness is a virtue and her rejection of altruism to be quite foreign. 

John and William W. Robinson understood what Ayn Rand failed so miserably to understand.   While she believed that the pursuit of one's own rational self-interest is  life's moral purpose, the true fact is that man evolved as a communal creature, with bonds to family and community tightly tied to health, happiness, longevity and pretty much everything that makes life pleasurable. 

Bringing a load of hay from the farm to town along the old plank road.  John Robinson used these trips into Lafayette as cover when picking up fugitive slaves for transport north toward Jasper County where they would be handed off to yet another "conductor" along the Underground Railroad.