John Lomax recorded a version of “Come by Here” in 1937 from a man raised in Meridian, Texas, the county seat of Bosque County where Lomax lived as a child. [1] The owners of both of John Robinson’s parents were men moving to Texas under clouded conditions.
Robinson’s grandmother, Priscilla, was born in Alabama about 1819. [2] Her owner, Ridley Robinson, was taking her, her four sons, and some cattle to California when he died in a fight with a Mexican in Bosque County in 1860. [3] His motives are unknown. If he were taking just cattle with a couple hands, one may guess he was hoping to profit from the provisions trade in mining areas.
The alternative is that he was rushing to move his assets from the South before war began. In 1860, John’s father Peter was 34 years old and his uncle John was 16. Zachiariah was the youngest, and Jack’s birth date is unknown. [4]
Seven years earlier, in 1853, the owner of John’s mother, Mariah, gave her to his daughter when she married. Her husband was living in Bosque County at the time, and Josephine, Mariah, and Mariah’s aunt and uncle followed him west. [5] The slaves were seized in New Orleans because “our massa, Massa Bob Young, he a cotton buyer and he done left Georgia without payin’ a cotton debt and dey holds us for dat.” [6]
Josephine’s father, Warren Jordan Hill, was the son of Theophilus Hill who received a headright grant for 15 people in Georgia in the late 1790s. The count included himself, his wife, five children, and eight slaves, who would have been acquired when the Atlantic slave trade was legal. He died in 1829 with 42 slaves. [7] Warren may have been given some by his father, or acquired Josephine’s mother from domestic sellers in Georgia.
Ridley’s death didn’t free his slaves. They were taken to Meridian where a court-appointed administrator hired them out on one-year contracts. Robinson’s father, Peter, always worked for Allison Nelson, [8] an Atlanta lawyer who had moved to Meridian in 1856. After Nelson died from typhoid fever in the Confederate army in 1862, [9] his widow continued to lease him. [10]
Life for Mariah and Peter was easier than it was for slaves in Sumter County. She said she was “a house-girl an stay’d in de house; nebber did stay out in de slave quarters” [11] in Georgia. When she was in Texas,
“de slaves was allowed to visit at a set time, usually Saturday night an’ Sunday after noon.” [12] Peter and his brother John [13] were fiddlers who played “foh both whites an’ blacks to dance all over de country.” [14]
Mariah remembered “Dere was quite a bunch of us an’ in de meantime durin de war I met Peter Robinson. We had a court-ship an got married after gettin’ permission from each of our bosses. We was married by Ceasar Berry (a slave of Buck Berry, an a colored preacher).” [15]
Reconstruction was almost as ugly in Texas as it was in Alabama. [16] In early 1870, after Republicans had won the state elections, an Austin newspaper reported “Bosque County was averaging two killings each week.” [17]
It must have been at this time that Peter was a teacher, registrar, trustee assigned to aiding war widows, and a representative in the state legislature. [18] He survived, bought land, and built a house in 1872. [19] However, Mariah recalled “twice we was burnt out in de same place.” [20]
While Sumter County closed its boundaries, outsiders continued to move into Bosque County. In 1878, James Sadler, two brothers and a sister came from Tennessee and founded what became the African-American colony of Rock Springs. [21]
They were members of the Colored Cumberland Presbyterian church. As mentioned in the post for 28 August 2019, the parent body was formed in 1810 after the Cane Ridge revival by individuals who valued religious experience over seminary education, and sang hymns as well as psalms. African Americans departed in 1874. [22]
Sadler was a preacher who organized his own church. [23] He also helped Peter establish a Cumberland Presbyterian church in Meridian. [24] Mariah remembered “we use to go to de church annual meetins’ in covered wagons.” [25]
Peter and Mariah had ten children. [26] Their daughter Ida married William Sedberry in 1896. John married Ella Hampton in 1906. Her mother had been brought to Texas from Tennessee. [27]
John Robinson [28]
1877 Born in Bosque County, Texas
1952 Die in Meridian, Texas
Ella Hampton Robinson [29]
1885 Ella Hampton born in Bosque County, Texas
1906 Ella marry John Robinson in Meridian, Texas, become Ella Robinson
1984 Ella Robinson die in Meridian, Texas
Ida Robinson Sedberry [30]
1874 Ida Robinson born in Bosque County, Texas, sister of John
1896 Ida Robinson marry William M. Sedberry, become Ida R. Sedberry
1968 Ida Sedberry die in Lubbock, Texas
Availability
John Robinson, Ella Robinson, and Ida Sedbury. [31] “Lord, Will You Come by Here.” Collected by John Lomax in Lubbock, Texas, 19 January 1937. Archive of American Folk Song.
Graphics
1. Mariah Hill Robinson with her daughter Lula. Ella Robinson collection. Reproduced in June Rayfield Welch. People and Places in the Texas Past. Dallas: G. L. A. Press, 1974. 107.
2. Home of Peter and Mariah Robinson. Ella Robinson collection. Reproduced by Welch. 105.
3. Photographs of John, Ella, and Ida appear on the Photos C tab.
End Notes
Ella Robinson gave copies of photographs and family papers to the Archives of the Bosque County Historical Commission, Meridian, Texas. Copies were provided by Bill Calhoon, Manager of Bosque County Collection.
1. The Lubbock [Texas] Evening Journal reported: “Despite the fact that both Lomax and John spent their early childhoods at Meridian, it was only by chance that the former got recordings here of the negro’s voice.” [32]
2. Rebecca Raddle. “Robinson, Priscilla.” 634 in Bosque County: Land and People. Meridian: Bosque County History Book Committee, 1985.
3. Mariah Robinson. Interview by the Federal Writers Project for the WPA’s Slave Narratives collection from Texas, volume 3. Washington: Library of Congress, 1941. [33]
4. Ages based on dates in Find a Grave entries for the Meridian Cemetery in Meridian, Texas.
5. There’s no indication if “uncle” and “aunt” were blood or communal titles.
6. Robinson, published version. Young’s father went to New Orleans to settle the matter.
7. Lodowick Johnson Hill, Sr. The Hills of Wilkes County, Georgia and Allied Families. Atlanta, Georgia: Johnson-Dallas Company, 1922. He said Theophilus received a “bounty grant” between 1794 and 1800. Alex Hitz said those had expired, but the Bounty Reserve was opened to headright settlers between 1790 and 1796. [34]
8. Raddle.
9. Thomas W. Cutrer. “Nelson, Allison.” Handbook of Texas Online website. 15 June 2010; last updated 26 November 2014.
10. Raddle.
11. Mariah Robinson. Interview by the Federal Writers Project that was not included in the published volume, but has been posted on s website as “Robinson, Mariah TX-3 35380.”
12. Robinson, unpublished version.
13. Raddle.
14. Robinson, unpublished version. I assume they learned while they were in Alabama.
15. Robinson, unpublished version.
16. One reason for the differences between the two states was the responses of the Republican governors. In Alabama, William Hugh Smith “rejected close identification with freed people,” and made reconciliation with whites his “basic priority.” Michael Fitzgerald said “he denied reports of Klan activity, refused to arm a state militia, and opposed federal antiterrorist legislation, even after it became clear that local officials were thoroughly intimidated.” [35]
In Texas, Allen Trelease said Edmund Jackson Davis organized a state police force that included all county officials. “Between July 1870 and December 1871 the state police arrested 4,580 persons, 829 of them for murder or attempted murder.” [36]
17. [Austin, Texas] Daily State Journal. Cited by “History of Bosque County.” Bosque County website.
19. Robinson, unpublished version.
19. Calculated date.
20. Robinson, unpublished version.
21. Gordon Nowlin. “James B. Sadler.” Website for the Historical Foundation of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America.
22. Wikipedia. “Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America.”
23. Nowlin.
24. Robinson, published version.
25. Robinson, unpublished version.
26. Robinson, published version.
27. “Annie Elizabeth Hampton.” Obituary. Probably 1911. Copy in Ella Robinson collection.
28. “John Robinson, Pioneer Chef, Rites at Meridian.” Obituary. 1952. Copy in Ella Robinson collection.
29. “Ella Robinson.” Obituary. Meridian [Texas] Tribune. 15 November 1985. 5. Copy in Ella Robinson collection.
30. David Sifford. “Ida Robinson Sedberry.” Find a Grave website. 2 November 2003.
31. This is the spelling used by the Archives.
32. “Voice of Ex-Meridian Negro To Be Heard on British Broadcasts.” The Lubbock [Texas] Evening Journal. 1938. Clipping in Ella Robinson collection; date from internal evidence.
33. For more information on the WPA Slave Narratives project, see the post for 23 January 2019.
34. Alex M. Hitz. “Georgia Bounty Land Grants.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 38:337–348:1954. 344.
35. Michael W. Fitzgerald. “Congressional Reconstruction in Alabama.” Encyclopedia of Alabama website. 11 August 2008; last updated 24 October 2017.
36. Allen W. Trelease. White Terror. New York: Harper and Row, 1971; paperback edition issued by Louisiana State University Press of Baton Rouge in 1995. 148.
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