Alameda County Biographies

HON. HENRY ROBINSON

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


 
The subject of this sketch was born in Chesterfield, Hampshire County, 
Massachusetts.  At an early age he removed with his father, Captain Josiah 
Robinson, to the adjoining town of Worthington, where he passed his youth 
engaged in farming, clerking in a store, and teaching school.  He sailed for 
California in January, 1849, and arrived in San Francisco the following August.  
Shortly after his arrival he went to the northern mines, and, until 1854, 
engaged in both mining and trading, often employing from twenty-five to fifty 
men in mining, and keeping one and sometimes two stores.  Close application to 
business undermined his health, and he sold out his trade in the fall of 1854, 
and went east in search of health.  Failing to find it he returned to California 
and located in Marysville, remaining, however, but a few years, and his health 
becoming no better he removed to San Francisco, and the following year to 
Alameda, where he engaged in farming and fruit-culture, and where he still 
resides.  In Marysville in 1856 he took an active part in the Republican reform 
movement of that year, it being the first national campaign of the Republican 
Party.  The second year after locating in Alameda he was elected a member of the 
Board of Supervisors to represent both Alameda and Brooklyn Townships.  The 
following year he was elected to the Assembly, and in 1865 he was elected to the 
Senate from Alameda County.  He was President of the Board of Town Trustees for 
several years after the incorporation of the town of Alameda in 1872.
 
History of Alameda County, California�, Oakland, M.W. Wood Publ., 1883, p. 967