The Robbins Family of Old Brunswick County by: William Lynn Robbins, Sr.

It is my hope that my descendants will remember that their genes are a mixture of those belonging to their ancestors, and that the culture, class, intelligence and wisdom they might hope to have must have been due to those of their ancestors.  We must believe that no one wants to die, and that everyone wants their progeny to remember them.

Allow me to present the text of the following pages in first person because that's the way I remember the many personal conversations and experience which will make up much of this publication.  Also, please forgive me for the informalities it contains.

I have to believe that God created this earth; and perhaps the "big bang" was the way He wanted to get the task accomplished; however, I am sure that everything since then is history.  It is pure truth, and it is unchangeable.  As historians, we can only site the events as we research them. And we do this by reading accounts and records of those truths.  Therefore, we owe what we write about to those who have written about it before us. None of us can take credit for the facts, but we can pass along our feelings and assumptions in our writings in order to  present our story as we believe it to have been; and we can take credit for that.

When I say "we" I am referring to those good researching historians known as Genealogists.  There have been several such historians who have been most important in helping me to arrive at the assumptions and suppositions you will read here.  We have worked together continually over the past seven years and each of them deserves a great deal of credit for encouraging me to put these facts together.

John Wright Butler of Leland, NC was the first historian to inspire me to collect facts about the Robbins families.  Much of the original information concerning the Robbins family in Edgecombe County which John gave me came from the papers and newspaper articles written by Dr. Hugh Buckman Johnston, Jr.  who was a Professor of History at Barton College (formerly Atlantic Christian College) in Wilson, NC.  Dr. Johnston passed  away in 1994 and many of his private papers are in the files of the NC State Archives in Raleigh.

Gladys Robbins Guins Wrenn of Cleveland, TX has been a tremendous inspiration for me and is probably the most active of all the historians researching the Robbins families.  She and her husband Lloyd have traveled throughout the East Coast in their search for the source of our Robbins family in America.  Gladys wrote a book entitled The Robbins Family from Virginia to Texas which gives an excellent account of Thomas and Isabella Robbins of Westmoreland County VA, and their progeny.  I highly recommend that the reader find a copy of her book for a thorough presentation of her research concerning Arthur Sr.'s son Benjamin and his family's journey to Texas. Even though she has researched all of the Thomas Robbins families who lived in Colonial Virginia, she found no information to link Thomas and Isabella to the Robbins families of Virginia's Accomack County on the Delmarva Peninsula; which families are so well documented and linked to Thomas Robyns of England in the year 1210.  Don't we all wish we could find that link?

Other fine researchers of the Robbins families from whom I have received extensive information are Arthur Miller of Orlando FL, Eugene W. Robbins of Spicewood, TX, (who wrote a book entitled Boggy Rangers, A Historical/Genealogical Study of the Early Robbins Families of Texas), Cecil Dunbar Robbins, Jr. of Bolivia, NC,  David Yielding of  Temple, TX, Les Robbins of Virginia Beach, VA, Betty Norem of Panama City, FL, Dorothy Robbins Bris-Bois of Winston-Salem, NC, Sherry Cornwell of Mt. Pleasant, SC, Pat Robbins of Richmond, Va., Betty Rodgers of Bolivia, NC, and a few others.

A good researcher always knows from which source a particular fact may have been discovered; even if some other researcher discovered that source.  In most cases, where I trust the researcher and believe that the source of a fact exists, I will not validate that fact by revisiting the source.  However, anyone who doubts this wisdom can always go back to the sources.  Many of us cite the same sources even without knowing how many times the source has been used by other researchers.

My heart-felt wish is that this book will be read by my progeny and future researchers of the Robbins families.  I encourage them to edit it, correct it, and continue its purpose of remembering our forefathers.

I had originally planned to write a book containing all of the information in this website; however, I decided that most people had a computer and access to the internet, and therefore the story could be published  at almost no cost and read by a greater number of people at no cost to the reader.

It may be that I will publish a few hard copies for the "Internet Impaired" and for the libraries which have provided me with much of the information you see here.

This Web Site is set up to link you to any of the Robbins Head of Households in my direct decendancy line starting with Thomas Robbins of  Westmoreland County, Virginia and continuing through my father, William Carlton Robbins.

Please click on one of my blood-line ancestors:

Thomas Robbins, Sr. the progenitor from Westmoreland County, Virginia

Thomas Robbins, Jr. the adventurer to Edgecombe County, NC

William Robbins  father of the old Revolutionary War soldier, William Sr.

Arthur Robbins, Sr., the adventurer to and progenitor of the family in Brunswick County, NC

Arthur Robbins, Jr., and his wife Rebecca Anderson stayed in Brunswick County  to expand the family

Thomas Robbins and his wife Elizabeth the farming family in TownCreek Township, Brunswick County

Thomas G. Robbins, known as Tommy and a Constible in the County and father of 17 Robbins families

Isaac Tolman Robbins and his wife Callie raised their family in Town Creek Township, Brunswick County, NC

William Manson Robbins, my Grandfather and a man I never understood or believed.

William Carlton Robbins, my father, a man of poor health, and who died at age 43