Ella Hampton Robinson

Topic: Early Versions
Ella Hampton’s mother, Annie Elizabeth, was born in 1866 in Gallatin, Tennessee, and “was brought to Texas when a child by the Campbells (whites whom she stayed with until of age.” [1]

Gallatin was then an unofficial refugee center.  Slaves fled to the Sumner County seat after Union forces took firm control of the area in 1863.  Many were hired back to their masters for wages. [2]  A camp was established in July for families of Black soldiers and the infirm who were abandoned by owners who moved to Confederate-controlled territory. [3]

By the end of 1863, Walter Durham said escaped slaves felt secure enough to move about in public.  “On Sundays there was preaching by blacks for blacks, sometimes held in one of the white church houses.” [4]

Confederate veterans returned after the war ended, and a different kind of civil war erupted in the county as individuals sought revenge on those they did not feel were loyal to the Southern cause. [5]  Whites moved into town to escape scavengers in the country. [6]  Some 220 families left Tennessee for the Bosque County, Texas, region between 1860 and 1880. [7]

Ella was born in 1885 [8] when her mother was 19 years old.  They must have stayed close to the Campbells after Lizzie married Wade Hampton, because Ella remembered that when she married John Robinson in 1906 she, Ella, wore a “beautiful ‘honey-moon’ gray and white stole, made by the white lady, in whose home” she was “partly reared.” [9]

Education existed for African Americans in Bosque County: less than 25% of the population over the age of 21 was completely illiterate in 1920. [10]  However, secondary training was limited to a school opened in the Sadler community in 1908. [11]

Ella apparently got some education, but probably began doing domestic work as soon as she was able.  She remembered that after her marriage she “wanted to finish my school-work here, so he let me go on to school and finish under Mrs. O. B. Malcomb.” [12]  This meant she may not have had to work so many hours for others.

She added: “Later, we both attended night-school with Mrs. Ora Hamilton, and did our high school work.  Then we began with Meridian College, where he was cook until it closed.

“Beatrice and I were the only colored, and the last to study at this college, where we both studied music.  I got in other studies that has helped us through life.” [13]

If Beatrice was John’s niece, then this would have occurred before her parents, William and Ida Sedberry, completed their move to Lubbock, Texas, in 1923. [14]  The Klan appeared in Bosque County in 1922 near Walnut Springs, [15] where John’s father had lived in the nineteenth century. [16]  Increased demonstrations of bigotry may have enforced segregation at the Methodist school.

During these years, Ella was working for the family of a local lawyer. [17]  Hugh Jackson Cureton’s father and grandfather were pioneer settlers in the area of Walnut Springs. [18]  Rebecca Radde said “Ella worked partly as a laundress.” [19]

When John and Ella moved to Lubbock in 1930, they left an area settled by Southerners, who had followed the Brazos before the Civil War, [20] for the high plains.  The white population of Bosque County dropped by 1,772 between 1920 and 1930.  There were 150 fewer African Americans at the end of the 1920s decade. [21]

In contrast, Lubbock was growing.  The total population increased from 11,096 in 1920 to 39,104 in 1930.  The Black community went from being a negligible 152 to 1,677.  That was more than three times the 510 in Bosque County. [22]

Sedberry’s Cumberland Presbyterian church may still have been small, but it had to have been larger than the one in Meridian.  In 1939 it produced a Christmas program that included instrumental and vocal solos and duets by fourteen different individuals.  Ella played an “instrumental Christmas selection.” [23]

When she returned to Meridian, Ella introduced musical events, including a Christmas program in 1942 that featured John’s mother, Mariah Hill Robinson, [24] and a piano recital in 1944. [25]  At some time, she directed a program of Negro spirituals and related songs for a white Methodist church.  It included “The Old Ship of Zion,” sung by John, “Swing low Sweet Chariot,” and “It’s Me O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.”  Ella sang “When they ring them Golden Bells.” [26]

Ella worked for Mary Wallace when they returned in 1942.  She had been born in Bosque County, and was the granddaughter of an early settler. [27]  Sometime after her second husband was killed in sawmill accident in 1930, [28] Wallace returned to Bosque County.  She died in 1946. [29]

Ella then worked for Wallace’s daughter for thirty years. [30]  Martha Brooks’ husband died in 1972, [31] and Ella retired soon after in 1973 at age 88. [32]

She remained active in  the women’s auxiliaries of her husband’s lodges: [33] the Order of Pilgrims and Eastern Star. [34]  She may have been more active than he in the church, especially after he died in 1952.

Sumner County, where her mother was born, had been a center of the revivals that preceded Cane Ridge. [35]  The first church near Gallatin

 was established by Presbyterians in 1783 [36] by William McGee. [37]  William Hodge became the pastor of the Shiloh church in 1800. [38]  A group went to the Gasper River to verify the rumors they heard about James McGready, then held a meeting at nearby Desha Creek in September 1800 with McGready and Hodge.  The same “emotional reactions” appeared. [39]

While Hodge eventually recanted and rejoined the Presbyterians, Shiloh became one of the original members of the new Cumberland Presbyterian denomination. [40]

In 1979, Ella was named woman of the year at the denomination’s annual meeting held in Detroit.  She wrote: “After the crowing, my request was that all from Texas stand and sing ‘Amazing Grace.’  When they rose and sang the house was on fire with the Holy Ghost.  It was like the great revival in 1810 when the old Cumberland Church was organized.” [41]

By then Ella was frail.  She had fallen in 1977, and spent 15 months in the local geriatric center while her bones mended. [42]  She was able to return to her home, [43] but died in the center in 1985 at age 99. [44]

Graphics
1.  Cumberland Presbyterian church from church minute book.  Ella Robinson collection.

2.  Her photograph appears 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.  “Annie Elizabeth Hampton.”  Obituary.  Unidentified newspaper clipping in Ella Robinson collection.  Hampton died in 1911.

2.  Walter T. Durham.  Rebellion Revisited.  Gallatin, Tennessee: Sumner County Museum Association, 1982.  168.

3.  Durham, Rebellion.  171.
4.  Durham, Rebellion.  172.
5.  Durham, Rebellion.  255–257.
6.  Wikipedia.  “Gallatin, Tennessee.”

7.  Homer L. Kerr.  “Migration into Texas, 1860–1880.”  The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 70:184–216:October 1966.  Total calculated from his data.  Durham said “threats and violence directed against Union men in the northern part of the county after the war caused the exodus of several families to safer territory in Missouri, Indiana, and, especially, Illinois.” [45]  Kerr noted many who came to Texas came in steps, with many from Tennessee stopping first in Arkansas. [46]

8.  Simone Wichers Voss.  “Roots: Bosque County-Style.”  Meridian Tribune, Meridian, Texas, 26 February 2014.  7B.

9.  Ella Hampton Robinson.  “Eulogy of the late Elder J. M. Robinson by EHR.”  Typed document in Ella Robinson collection.

10.  1920 Census: Volume 3.  Population, Composition and Characteristics of the Population by States.  United States Census, 1922.  “Table 9.  Composition and Characteristics of the Population, for Counties: 1920.”  991.

11.  Voss.  The Sadler community is discussed in the post for 11 April 2021.
12.  Robinson, eulogy.
13.  Robinson, eulogy.

14.  See the post for 25 April 2021 for details on John’s sister Ida and her husband, William Sedberry.

15.  William C. Pool.  A History of Bosque County Texas.  San Marcos, Texas: San Marcos Record Press, 1954.  62.  “Although the Klan was active in local politics for almost a decade, its influence was limited and its revival of brief duration.”

16.  See the post for 11 April 2021 for details on John’s father, Peter Robinson.

17.  Voss.  In the context of Meridian College closing in 1927, Voss wrote Ella “had also worked in the Cureton family for about twenty years.”

18.  Wm C. Pool and Jack Cureton.  “Cureton, Captain J. J. (Jack).”  240–241 in Bosque County: Land and People.  Edited by Nell Gillam Jensen.  Meridian, Texas: Bosque County History Book Committee, 1985.

Jack Cureton.  “Cureton.”  241 in Jensen.

19.  Rebecca Raddle.  “Robinson, Priscilla.”  634 in Jensen.

20.  Robert L. Foster.  “Black Lubbock: a History of Negroes in Lubbock, Texas, to 1940.”  Master of Arts thesis.  Texas Tech University.  December 1974.  5.

21.  Table 9, United States Census, 1920.  Bosque County, 991.

1930 Census: Volume 3.  Population, Reports by States.  United States Census, 1932.  “Table 11 - Population by Age, Color, Nativity, and Sex, for Counties: 1930.”  951.

22.  Table 9, United States Census, 1920.  1005.

Table 11, United States Census, 1930.  962.

23.  Messiah Presbyterian church, Lubbock, Texas.  “Silver Tree and Silver Offering” on 13 December 1939.  Program in Ella Robinson collection.

24.  Handwritten notes on Christmas program, Meridian, Texas, 25 December 1942.  Ella Robinson collection.

25.  “Recital.”  Typed program, 9 June 1944.  Ella Robinson collection.

26.  “Meridian, Texas.”  Unidentified newspaper clipping in Ella Robinson collection.  “When They Ring Those Golden Bells” was composed in 1887 by Daniel de Marbelle [47] and appeared in a number of gospel songbooks. [48]

27.  Melba Collier Johnson.  “Collier, Francis Marion.”  217 in Jensen.

28.  John Owen.  “William Parker Wallace (1875 - 1930).”  Wiki Tree website.  Last updated 23 October 2019.  Her first husband was Homer Randal. [49]

29.  John Owen.  “Mary Caroline (Collier) Wallace (1885 - 1946).”  Wiki Tree website.  Last updated 19 October 2018.

30.  “Ella Robinson.”  Obituary.  Meridian Tribune, Meridian, Texas, 15 November 1985.  5.  Ella Robinson collection.

31.  Linda Huff.  “Martha Randal Wallace Brooks.”  Find a Grave website.  1 March 2008; last updated by The Cemetery Lady.

32.  Robinson, obituary.
33.  John Robinson’s activities are discussed in the post for 18 April 2021.
34.  Robinson, obituary.

35.  The Cane Ridge revival is discussed in the posts for 8 November 2020 and 11 November 2020.  The map with the first shows the location of Nashville.  Gallatin is about 30 miles to the northeast.

36.  Kitty Kulakowski.  “Early Settlers Brought Their Religion With Them to County.”  The News-Examiner, Gallatin, Tennessee, 29 March 1986.  3-C.

37.  Walter T. Durham.  The Great Leap Westward.  Gallatin, Tennessee: Sumner County Public Library Board, 1993.  159.  McGee is discussed in the post for 8 November 2020.

38.  Durward T. Stokes.  “Hodge (Hodges), William.”  NC Pedia website.  1988.

39.  John B. Boles.  The Great Revival.  Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1996 edition.  71.

40.  Stokes.

41.  “Card of Thanks.”  June 13.  Unidentified newspaper clipping in Ella Robinson collection.  1979 deduced from statement she was 94 years old. [50]

42.  Ella Robinson.  “‘Miss Ella’ Enjoys Stay in Geriatric Center.”  Unidentified newspaper clipping in Ella Robinson collection.  Year deduced from the fact she was 92 years old.  “Many thanks to Mrs Ida Etchinson, who gave me first aid, picked me up and carried me to the hospital after my fall.”

43.  “Open House Planned by Ella Robinson.”  Unidentified newspaper clipping in Ella Robinson collection.

44.  Robinson, obituary.
45.  Durham, Rebellion.  293.
46.  Kerr.  192.
47.  Wikipedia.  “When They Ring Those Golden Bells.”
48.  “When They Ring the Golden Bells.”  Hymnary website.
49.  Johnson.
50.  Robinson, Geriatric Center.

John, Ella, and Ida Robinson - Lord, Will You Come by Here

 

Topic: Early Versions
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]

Notes on Performers
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.