Buena Vista County, IA
IAGenWeb Project

In tracing the ancestral history of the family to a still more remote period it is found that Benjamin Robinson, Sr., the great-grandfather of our subject [Clinton J. Robinson], was born in Stephentown, New York, in 1786.  When but a lad he removed to the town of Manlius, where he remained until 1804, and was then engaged by Henry Bush, of Volney, New York, to go and teach school in that town.  Mr. Bush was authorized by the inhabitants to pay six dollars per month for a teacher but Mr. Robinson declined the position unless he could be paid eight dollars per month, which sum was finally agreed upon and the young schoolmaster started for Volney.  On the way Mr. Bush requested Mr. Robinson not to disclose the fact that he was to have over six dollars per month, saying that he proposed to pay the extra two dollars out of his own pocket.  Mr. Robinson opened school in 1804 in a log schoolhouse just over Seneca Hill, that being the first school ever taught in the town.  At that time there was but one frame house upon the site of the present village of Fulton.  In 1801 Mr. Robinson was married to Miss Sweet, with whom he lived forty-eight years.  In 1812 he taught the first school in the present town of Grandy, then Hannibal, in a little log schoolhouse and from that time became closely identified with the interests of the locality.  He served in the war of 1812 and always took an active interest in public affairs.

*Taken from biography of Clinton J. Robinson, p. 306-10.