| JOSEPH ROBINSON was born March 8,1827, in Tennessee. Due to lack of recordkeeping in the early 1800s and to the burning of court houses, destroying all records has made it impossible to locate and trace the movements and locations to this date. There is a Joseph Robinson listed in the census records of the State of Tennessee in Roane County, 1830.
We have family Bible records of when Joseph Robinson married Louisa Akin on March 14, 1848 and when their first child, John James, was born in Tippah County, Mississippi on August 1, 1850. From there we have only what my mother told me some 20 years ago; that river boat traveling was much more available and faster and safer than trying to move by covered wagon from Mississippi to Texas and trying to dodge Indian arrows popping out of the woods on both sides. So it is believed they took the boat down the big river to the gulf and across to Galveston Bay and transferred to small flat bottom river boats to go up the Trinity River as far as they could go. Then they bought a wagon and horses and moved out into the county, usually around Van Zandt County in east Texas. That is where the second child was born, Millia Ann "Molly" on August 7 1885.
Shortly after Molly was born, they moved on west to Acton, a good size community. This was before Hood County was created in 1866. This is why the next three children are listed as being born in Parker County because Weatherford, the county seat, was the closest county seat to Acton. Children born here were Hasseltine Judson Byers, May 22, 1857, Joseph Turner, March 30, 1859, Graves, August 19, 1862, who died on August 27, 1862, and Theodocia Earnest, August 19, 1864. Mother always said that Theodocia (her mother) was born in Van Zandt County that they had gone back there for a visit when she was born.
In late 1855, Rev. Joseph Robinson and some of his neighbors cut poles and brush and built a brush arbor or tabernacle (open on all sides) and Joseph started preaching under this brush arbor. I can remember when I was a small boy in about 1917 or 1918 seeing the remains of the old brush arbor.
I remember mother telling of what her father told her about grandpa Robinson. When he was preaching under the brush arbor he and all the men in the congregation took their shot guns to church (in case of Indian raids) and grandpa would stand his shot gun up against the pulpit and preach a sermon. If any unusual commotion took place in the woods nearby, he would say "church dismissed." All the men would take their guns and go looking for Indians. There were lots of Indians in the territory at that time.
Great grandpa Joe Robinson was also a 32nd degree Mason, and there was no lodge in the territory. So grandpa and a lot of his friends and lodge brothers set to building a lodge. Today the two-story stone building across the road from the old brush arbor site (where a new brick church stands) is a State Historical Site. The top floor was the Masonic Lodge and the ground floor was the church house on Sunday and the school house during school terms. My mother, Exer Smith Wells, Daughter of Theodocia, went to school in this building when she was very young.
Most of the Robinson family are buried in the Acton cemetery in front of the stone building.
Theodocia, my grandmother, and Beauregard "Boley" Smith, my grandfather married December 25, 1883. Their first child was Exer, born October 23, 1884. Their second child, Charlie was born October 1886 and died June 2, 1887. Nine days later on June 11, 1887 Theodocia died. Both are buried in the Acton cemetery. This left Boley and 2 year, 8 month old Exer alone.
You know the rest of the story.
Floyd M. Wells
(1987)
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