4 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



held the office of sealer of weights and measures, and 

 was otherwise prominent in the community. A soldier 

 in the Revolution, he, like his father, on occasion sold 

 provisions to the Army. 1 



Jacob the Second, born at Windham in 1772, died in 

 Tolland in 1809, surviving his father by only a few 

 months. 2 On June 14, 1796, he married Salinda Ladd, 

 of Coventry, born in 1772. Solon Robinson was the 

 fourth of their five children. Jacob Robinson, at his 

 death, left his widow with this sizeable family and very 

 little property. 3 Two years later, Salinda married the 

 more affluent James Robinson, a cousin of her first hus- 

 band. 4 She lived only two years to enjoy her prosperity, 

 and Solon became an orphan at the age of ten. 5 James, 

 who had one child by Salinda, was henceforth appar- 

 ently unwilling to support his stepchildren, and on 

 March 15, 1815, Captain William Bottom, of Lisbon, 

 whose wife was Jacob Robinson's sister, was appointed 

 guardian for the young boy. 6 Solon helped on the farm 

 and became skillful with tools through an apprentice- 

 ship to the carpenter trade, an occupation which he 

 was forced to discontinue because the work was too hard 

 on his health. 7 In a poem written many years later, 



'Town of Windham, Connecticut: Family Records, 1756-1778, 

 vol. 2:302; Connecticut Archives: Revolutionary War, 1763-1789, 

 vol. 6: doc. 458a; vol. 35: docs. 49, 171; Tolland, Connecticut, Town 

 Records of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1792-1850, p. 37. 



3 Robinson Genealogy, 1:145. 



3 Ibid.; Papers relating to estate of Jacob Robinson, 1809-1814, 

 in possession of Mrs. A. S. Field, Brooklyn, Connecticut; Connecti- 

 cut Archives: Stafford Probate District Court Records, Tolland, 

 1810, no. 1805. 



* Robinson Genealogy, 1:145. 



5 Ibid. 



8 Connecticut Archives : Norwich Probate District Court Rec- 

 ords, March 15, 1815, no. 9366. 



7 The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 3:454 (James 

 T. White & Company, New York, 1893) ; The Cyclopaedia of Amer- 

 ican Biography, volume 5 (New York, 1915) ; Knotts, A. F., "Solon 

 Robinson. An Address delivered ... at Crown Point, August 27, 

 1921." 



