8 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



in the Indiana Republican of May 5. 1 Buyers were few, 

 however, and the town of Solon remained as it had begun, 

 with Robinson its chief resident. 



Lewis David von Schweinitz, naturalist and Moravian 

 church worker, who visited the town of Solon on June 1, 

 1831, and stayed at the cabin of Solon Robinson, evi- 

 dently found his host an unusual individual and one not 

 altogether to his liking. He records in his journal : "We 

 had our breakfast in a building which externally was 

 quite an ordinary cabin, built and roofed with logs. In- 

 side, however, everything was very respectable and even 

 elegant, as this building is the new town of Solon, the 

 printed advertisements for which we had come across 

 everywhere recently. We would have noted with pleas- 

 ure the valuable library of the owner, if the atheist news- 

 papers of Miss Frances Wright, lying about in profusion, 

 and public effusions against clergy, temperance society, 

 etc., had not shown how, even here, the lamentable reac- 

 tion against the exaggerations of the times is producing 

 its injurious effects and most sadly increasing the confu- 

 sion of mind generated by religious contentiousness." 2 



Reluctant to concede the defeat of his plans, Robinson 

 for some time fought valiantly to make his town a real- 

 ity. That he was eventually convinced his talents lacked 

 opportunity in Jennings County is suggested by an ad- 

 vertisement in a Madison paper of October 25, 1832, 

 extolling his virtues as a landlord and tavern keeper at 

 Solon, but revealing that he continued there only because 

 the individual who had agreed to purchase his "stand" 

 had backed out. 3 



For another year Robinson lived in Jennings County. 

 Only a few incidents of interest have come down to us 

 for that period. On March 18, 1833, he acquired full 



1 Post, 46. 



2 Journey . . . to Goshen, Bartholomew County in 1831, 233-34 

 (Indiana, Historical Society Publications, 8:no. 5, Indianapolis, 

 1927) . 



' Post, 48. 



