This is September 10, 1954. I
have long considered that before "getting ready to die" I ought
to set down a few of the sparse historical facts and traditions
about family that I have picked up, and also a little account of
my own father and mother. I know I have often wished that my
father had made accessible some of the stories of family that
were in the back of his own mind, so familiar that he did not
think them worth mentioning. As we grow older, interest in such
things seems to develop. Today it occurs to me that perhaps I
might better not put off my part until ready to die, lest I miss
the signal or something happen. Especially since the .story is
not long, my memory of incidents and events never having been of
the kind that makes real story-tellers — never full enough for
that.
The first Robins that we know
anything about is William Robins, whose Last Will and Testament,
though apparently, for lack of indications that it was ever
registered, not his final one, is now, in original manuscript
and signed, sealed, and witnessed by Christopher Nation and
Christopher Vickery, in the possession of my brother, Henry
Moring Robins, of Asheboro, North Carolina. This Will is dated
October 8, 1786. In it William Robins identifies himself as of
Randolph County, N. C., calls himself "Blacksmith," and notes
that he is under some indisposition of body which causes him to
think of a final disposition of his property. Apparently he was
farmer as well as blacksmith, for the will disposes of
farm-tools as well as blacksmith-tools, and distributes five
hundred and eighty acres of land among the family. These heirs
are his sons John and Christopher, his grandson Abel (son of
Silas deceased), and his widow and youngest son — these last two
together. The widow was to have the home-place during her
lifetime, and after her this youngest son Daniel. Daniel
evidently lived with his parents.
Cousin Sarah Lambert, in her
seven-page manuscript history of the Robins family, relays the
report that William "took up much government land in Randolph
County in the long ago," and that may represent older family
tradition on the point of his being an original settler in those
parts. For Sarah's mother, who was my father's oldest sister,had
a long memory and many stories to tell which I am sorry to have
forgotten.
We do not know when William
was born or when he died. He must have lived on a while after
getting ready to die with a Will — a Will which is one of the
two things we know about him. The census of 1790 apparently
brings him forth once more into the light. This census lists
only the heads of households. It gives one and only one William
Robbins (the census is responsible for its own spelling and
often makes a curious job of it) in Randolph County. It lists
eight other Robbinses at least, including two Johns and a
Christopher. One of the Johns and this Christopher could be the
two older sons of William. Daniel is not named and would not be,
because he lived on the home-place with his father and mother
and was not the head of a household.
Early censuses are not always
too correct in other matters than spelling, but this one fits on
to the Last Will fairly well on the whole, though with one minor
problem and one larger and rather interesting one. William
Robbins, or Robins in his own way of it, is credited in the
census report with three male dependents "over sixteen years of
age, including heads of families"; and with none under sixteen.
Two of these dependents would be Daniel (aged 20) and Grandson
Abel. The third could be a younger brother of Abel, over
sixteen, or son Christopher — if the Christopher in the census
came from another family. Our Christopher remained a bachelor.
"Christopher" and "Marmaduke" were among the names much in use
in that part of Randolph, in several different families.
William is further credited with eight white
female dependents, including heads of families. These could be
his wife Frances; his daughters Elizabeth, Frances, Charity,
Ann, Rachel (all mentioned in the will) ; the widow of Son
Silas; and one unknown. Seven out of eight is not bad. Many a
married woman has an unmarried sister alongside.
The more serious difficulty in
putting together Census and Will is that the former credits
Father William with owning nine slaves, and of slaves there is
in the Will no mention. Could he have acquired that many slaves
between 1786 (the date of the Will) and 1790 (the date of the
Census) ? Could he have purposed to free his slaves or to summon
the family and dispose of them in some other way than by Will —
that is by gift ? Could there be a mis-print in the Census?
Could the William of our Will have died before 1790, as he
half-expected to do, and could some other William be the only
one in the county at that later date ?
If this last were the case,
then why is there no Daniel listed in the census ? He would be a
land-owner and head of household; the paternal roof would have
ceased to hide him. Moreover he would be living on the
home-place of his father, a considerable land-owner of the past.
My brother has a deed, dated 1793, from Christopher Robins to
Daniel, conveying a hundred and sixty acres of land on Polecat
Creek (his inheritance and a little more apparently), and
calling for Abel _Robins's line as a boundary. So Daniel was
locally a coming man, and. where is he in the census if the
William of the census is not his father, and if he is not
accounted for as a dependent?
We might interject that since
Daniel married in December 1790, there is a bare possibility
that his wife is the one female missing to make up the eight
called for in the census.
We were rather surprised when
we found William credited with owning nine slaves, even though
nine might be only one sizeable family of them. Our original
prejudice was that there could not have been very many slaves in
upper Randolph in those times. But looking the census report
over further, we find there were actually more than we had
supposed. William Bell, not so far off, is credited with
sixteen. He was the largest slave-owner that we definitely know
to have lived fairly near our folks. But there were quite a few
others. Perhaps in our case the real puzzle is that our family,
in its later history, showed no signs of having fallen from any
slave-owning class, and that they intermarried twice with the
Swaims, some of whom we know to have been with the Quakers on
the slavery question. But the thing is not impossible. Randolph
County was short on aristocrats anyhow, as in some degree was
the Old North State.
Well, most of the Robinses I
know are rather fond of mystery stories, so we drop this little
one on them as we go along.
William's son Daniel is our
ancestor. Born in 1770, he lived until October 8, 1831. In 1790
he married Massah, daughter of John and Elizabeth Vickery Swaim.
Sarah Lambert says that Daniel
must have had more than the ordinary country education of his
time. I may say that all the notations I have seen in the Daniel
Robins or the Marmaduke Swaim Bibles (Sarah had both of these
and her daughter Massah has them today) are written in a right
clerkly hand that would be a credit to any of us and more than
that to some. The proof though which Sarah gives of Daniel's
literacy or education is of a different kind. She says that she
has in her possession an old torn and tattered manuscript book
containing original hymns and poems written by Daniel. Somehow
or other I missed seeing that book, perhaps failed to ask for it
at the right time. (Massah Lambert told me the other day that
she thinks she has it still, but that it is mostly illegible.) .
It is said that he had the design, never carried into effect, of
getting out a book of poetry or hymnology, all of his own stuff.
The only proof of his talents available to me now is a single
hymn of his which Sarah got printed in the Asheboro Courier.
Here it is, and some of us have no doubt written worse poetry in
our time:
Ye glittering orbs around the skies,
That speak his glories in disguise,
Your silent language cannot tell
The powers of Emmanuel.
Tall mountains that becloud the sky,
Whilst all the hills around them lie,
Whilst time endures, you cannot tell
The powers of Emmanuel.
Ye World, and worlds with all your throng,
Through every climate extend the song.
Guilty sinners preserved from hell
By Christ the King Emmanuel.
Behold Him leave his Father's throne;
Behold him bleed, and hear him groan ;
Death's strong chain would fail to tell
The strength of King Emmanuel.
Behold Him take his ancient seat
Whilst millions bow beneath his feet;
He conquered all the hosts of hell;
We'll crown him King Emmanuel.
His fame shall spread from pole to pole,
Whilst glory rolls from soul to soul.
The gospel is sent forth to tell
The glories of Emmanuel.
Whilst I am singing of His name,
My soul rejoices in the same.
I'm full, I'm full, but cannot tell
The love of King Emmanuel.
I long to hear His trumpet sound
And see his glories all around.
I then shall shout, and sing and tell
Salvation through Emmanuel.
Ten thousand thousands join the song,
Ten thousand thousands in the throng.
He saved us from a gaping hell;
All glory to Emmanuel.
To me at least it feels funny
not to know anything about your great-grandfather except his
having written such a hymn as that. I mean anything personal,
for dates and that mention in the Will are not personal. It is
almost as bad as if the family had to reconstruct me out of a
bit of Woofus poetry. One guesses that he was a better churchman
than most of the Robinses we have known, and that he was
impressed by the popular theology of the day enough for some of
it to come out of him rather sonorously. He must have had more
education than a good many people of his day, and it seems as if
he had some ear for music or rhythm as well as rhyme.
Daniel and Massah Swaim Robins
had seven sons and only one daughter. The sons were Eli,
William, Daniel, John, Christopher, Joshua, Richard. The
daughter was named Charity and died at the age of. thirteen.
Sarah Lambert lists nine
children of this second William and four of this Christopher
(Daniel's sons), and no doubt their descendants are scattered
around in Randolph and thereabouts. But there are none of them
that we know just how to hang on the family tree, or to connect
up with. And besides they must all have taken a second 'b' unto
themselves.
Once when I was a student at
Chapel Hill, I met Dr. Kemp P. Battle on the campus. He was
ex-president of the University and the man who chiefly revived
it after the Civil War. He was now professor of history, and he
was always full of antiquarian interests. He inquired about my
father's health (he had taught my father back in the 1850's),
and asked me presently if I knew the origin of my family name. I
told him No. He said it was a shortened form of Robinson, just
as
Roberts is of Robertson,
Richards of Richardson, and Davids and Davis of Davidson; and
that some people had put two ' b's in it to keep it from being
pronounced "Ro-bins," the 'o' long. I presume that is correct.
So far as I can discover, from Father William on down our direct
line has always adhered to the original form of the name.
Daniel's son John, my
grandfather, and his brother Joshua married two sisters,
respectively Margaret and Esther Swaim. Joshua moved West in
early life, eventually to Iowa, and the family in Carolina lost
track of him before or about the time of the Civil War. I
chanced upon one of his descendants in Ann Arbor, Michigan, when
the young' man with whom I was dealing about a fountain pen
inquired across the counter how .1 got the "Swaim" in the middle
of my name. I had given the invocation at Michigan University
Commencement the day before and my name had been printed in full
on the program. That is how he got it. When it came out that my
father was named Marmaduke Swaim Robins, that clicked in his
mind at once. One value in an unusual name like "Marmaduke!" The
young man was a great grandson of Joshua, name of Ryder. I
believe somebody in his family had invented a fountain pen, or
improved on one. If that inventiveness came on the Robins side,
it would be the one faint touch of scientific genius in the
family up to or preceding the present generation.
The suggestion of possible
obligation to other tribes we have intermarried with makes this
a good point to bring in the Swaim family. My father used to say
he was three-fourths Swaim, and he was proud of the fact. Both
his mother Margaret and his paternal grandmother Massah were
Swaims. He always pronounced it "Swim" (as in "swimming") and so
did everybody else in North Carolina until some member of the
tribe sprouted an interest in phonetics or reformed spelling and
set a new style, or until some logical-minded schoolteachers got
hold of the Swaim children and persuaded them that such
pronunciations as the ancient one just simply could not be. The
1790 Census spells the name "Swim."
Father's uncle, William Swaim,
became a rather famous editor in North Carolina considering the
very short period of his active life at that vocation, which was
only six or seven years. In fact, he was a challenging liberal
for the times. The North Carolina Historical Review for July
1953,
published by the state's
department of Archives and History, has an interesting article
on ante-bellum newspapers of the State in which it gives an
impressive and interesting account of the Greensboro Patriot,
and in particular of the strenuous controversies over slavery
and free speech which that paper entered into while under the
leadership of William Swaim. This was along about 1830. William
Swaim had a daughter who married a Porter and became the mother
of William Sidney Porter, known to the literary world as "0.
Henry." An enlarged photograph or daguerreotype of Editor
William hangs alongside the 0. Henry collection in the
Greensboro Public Library. The year before he died, 1834, he
started a second newspaper in what must have been the very rural
hamlet of New Salem, in Randolph County, and made his "distant
cousin," Benjamin Swaim, editor.
Benjamin Swaim appears to have
been a son of the eldest brother of great-grandmother Massah. He
was long a lawyer at Asheboro and published several legal
text-books designed to help intelligent people be their own
lawyer. More sensible project then than now, since the law has
become so complicated. Swaim's "Justice," printed first at New
Salem, went through another edition or two elsewhere. He also
published in monthly installments from that New Salem office a
book of legal forms and general advice, garnished with a few
stories and bits of humor.
After Editor William Swaim's death, the Greensboro Patriot
presently came under the leadership of another Swaim from New
Salem and from the printing office which had been established
there. Lyndon Swaim was a son of great grandmother Massah's
younger brother, Moses. He was called to the Greensboro
editorship when, a year or so after its fighting editor's death,
the paper had fallen to a low ebb. Lyndon Swaim succeeded well,
carried along in that post much longer than his more exciting
and stirring predecessor, and was a prominent citizen of
Greensboro for almost half a century. He presently married the
widow of William Swaim. I have recently seen a newspaper sketch
of his life written by Judge R. D. Douglas. After paying tribute
to Lyndon Swaim as editor, the judge mentions his services as
Clerk of the Court for quite a period, and then tells of how in
his later years he took up the study of architecture and
rendered a valiant and honorable service to his community along
that line. He was also an elder of the Presbyterian Church in
Greensboro, which church had his life written up for its
records.
A lot of North Carolina Swaims
went west before the Civil War as did a lot of the Coffins and
others. Cousin Oscar Coffin claims that his family was mostly
drained out of North Carolina, and mostly to Indiana, on account
of discomfort over the slavery question. Some of the Coffins
were Quakers, and some of the Swaims associated a lot with the
Quakers, on top of being close neighbors, there in northeast
Randolph County, and in Guilford. William Swaim, for example,
shared the Quaker view of slavery. Slavery may have had a good
deal to do with many of our Swaim relatives leaving for Indiana,
which of course was a big, new, fertile country anyhow. In any
case they got there. In the year 1890 there was a Swaim family
reunion at David Stanton's, Level Cross, at which my father
spoke, and to which he took Henry and me, and to which came a
number of Swaims and Swaim kin from the West. I remember in
particular a stalwart old farmer from Henry County, Indiana,
with six stout sons in his train or his quiver. He had made the
trip back by wagon, and they tell me that he made the trip as
many as eight times before he died. I think his name was
Jonathan.
Driving by car across Indiana,
to or from Galesburg, Illinois, where we lived the two years
from 1928 to 1930, I looked up Mrs. Ella Tomlinson ("Tomlinson"
is another Randolph Quaker name), at the town of Summitville,
she being at that time secretary of the Swaim Family
Association, of Indiana, or in general, I know not which. From
her I got that short sketch of old Swaim family genealogy which
I turned over to Sarah Lambert and which she included in her
paper.
This record begins with
Anthony Swaim, who came to America "from Holland about 1700,"
and settled near Richmond, Staten Island, New York. He had four
sons: Michael, Mathias, William, and one whose name is not
known. Michael, the brief notation continues, remained on Staten
Island and his descendants "live up the Hudson." Mathias removed
to Essex County, N. J. William settled in Surry County, N. C.
(The fourth may have settled in Ohio, but that is a suggestion
from some other source.)
William of Surry County, N.
C., had three sons. Of these we are told that Michael and Moses
"probably remained in Surry County." Son John, born in 1748,
settled in Randolph in 1767, and the very same year was married
to Elizabeth Vickery, she being seventeen
years old and he nineteen at the time.
In his biographical sketch of Lyndon Swaim. Judge Douglas has
this to say about our common ancestor, John Swaim, and his wife:
"He was born in 1748, reared in the pioneer surroundings of the
times and became a friend and hunting companion of Daniel Boone.
His wife was Elizabeth Vickery, a daughter of one of the
Regulators who became the vanguard of American freedom on the
field of Alamance."
If you do not know your North Carolina history, "Alamance" is
the name of a battlefield in the county of that name on which
rebellious colonists of the state, led and inspired by Herman
Husbands of the northeast part of Randolph County and before
that of Pennsylvania met and stoutly opposed the forces of the
Royal governor in the year 1771.
Judge Douglas adds that John
Swaim, settling in Randolph, "carved a home -and farm out of the
wilderness, and became a successful farmer and raised a large
family." We may specify that the "large family" means eleven
children, eight sons and three daughters. Their eldest daughter,
Massah, as we have seen, married Great-grandfather Daniel
Robins. One of their sons was named Marmaduke, which leads me to
comment that this name occurred at least three times in the
Swaim family before it was handed on to my father. This
particular owner of that moniker was born in 1784 and died in
1822. Both he and his brother Moses, Lyndon's father, are buried
in the almost lost Timber Ridge cemetery near Level Cross. (We
find the cemetery and their headstones in December 1954. It is a
Swaim family cemetery in the main, although there are many of
the graves marked only by an unreadable or an uninscribed
stone.)
Sarah Lambert relays the
tradition that all the Swaims in North Carolina are descended
from William of Surry County. And after his son John comes to
Randolph we hear no more in our traditions of Surry relatives
coming down. But therein lies another small mystery. In our old
friend, the 1790 census, John Swaim ("Swim") is the only Swaim
listed in Randolph County. Of course his eldest son would not
then have arrived at the status of "head of a family." In nearby
Guilford County, there are no Swaims at all given, and that is
not surprising. In Surry, there is listed a Michael Swaim, and
two or three more. The question then is whence comes this the
second Swaim cross in our family line ?
Perhaps it is just as well to
bear in mind that our earliest public records are not too
reliable ; and also that family traditions, especially when not
based on almost contemporary written records, are less than
fully dependable. Here is this Marmaduke Swaim, with that
family-pet, that Randolph-pet of a given-name, showing up from
nowhere so far as either tradition or records show. My guess is
he was a son of Michael of Surry County. The Ryders, of Ann
Arbor, had the name "Michael" strongly fixed in their tradition.
As already noted, John Robins
and his brother Joshua made a second descent upon the Swaim
tribe, and carried off Margaret and Esther. Then John and
Margaret, my grandparents, had four sons and four daughters. The
eldest child was Massah, Mrs. Lambert's mother and a very
familiar figure of my youth. Her husband was a Primitive or
Hard-shell Baptist preacher. That kind of Baptists did not have
regularly settled preachers, whether the fact had anything to do
with their distinguishing doctrine of Predestination or not. The
ministerial vocation was a precarious one among them. I always
knew Aunt Massah as living in a log cabin under pretty primitive
conditions. It seems as if her hat was always a bandanna
handkerchief. I forget how many times she had read the Bible
through from cover to cover; but so far as I know she holds the
family record on that. She had four children, but the Lamberts
are her only living descendants.
Marmaduke Swaim Robins, my
father, came next in the family, being born in 1827. After him,
the next son was Isaiah Spurgeon Robins, born May 30, 1837, who
was one of the two brothers lost in the Civil War.
There is in the family a good
though now dim daguerreotype of Isaiah Robins. Old Doctor Sam
Henley, the only doctor settled in Asheboro when I first knew
it, once took me aside to talk about Isaiah and to relieve his
mind from one little suppressed thought of what might have been.
He said:
