INTRODUCTION 21 



religious denomination, but there is abundant evidence 

 to show that he had a deep and abiding faith in Deity. 

 When the Reverend Hawley B. Beers, of the Porter 

 County Mission, visited Lake Court House in 1837, Rob- 

 inson offered his cabin as a place of assembly for several 

 meetings. 1 In his address before the settlers of Crown 

 Point in 1847, he recalled in detail the development of 

 religious worship in the county and criticised his fel- 

 low citizens severely for their backwardness in building 

 adequate churches for public worship. 2 Again and again 

 throughout his writings occur passages which indicate 

 his religious faith. 



Solon was likewise a lifelong advocate of temperance, 

 and in June, 1841, joined with Norman Warriner and 

 Hervey Ball to organize the Lake County Temperance 

 Society. Meetings held in the log courthouse were well 

 attended. This society had considerable influence in the 

 community until superseded, about 1848, by a Division of 

 the Sons of Temperance. Robinson contributed to the 

 support of these organizations and was a leading figure 

 in their deliberations. 3 One of the first of the activities 

 sponsored by the Temperance Society was a Fourth of 

 July celebration in 1841, held in a grove at Crown Point 

 and attended by some three hundred persons. 4 Robin- 

 son's antipathy toward intemperance is reflected fre- 

 quently in his writings, and there is no doubt of the 

 sincerity of his convictions on this subject. 



Although handicapped by fragile health and recur- 

 ring periods of illness (he suffered from a tubercular 

 tendency all his life), Robinson was endowed by nature 

 with a forceful personality, and the varied experiences 

 he encountered on the frontier tended to develop social 

 qualities which stood him in good stead when he later 



"Ball, Lake County, from 183 % to 1872, 51; Robinson, "History 

 of Lake County, 1833-1847," op. tit., 47. 



2 Ibid., 43, 47-48, 50, 56, 57, 58. 



3 Ball, Lake County, from 1834 to 1872, 166; Goodspeed and 

 Blanchard (eds.), Counties of Porter and Lake, 486. 



4 Robinson, op. tit, 54; Ball, Lake County, 1884, 127. 



