From "HISTORY OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY,"  Vol. I, page 335.
Brant & Fuller, 1890.


JOHN R. ROBINSON

John R. Robinson, for many years connected with the iron industry of 
Wheeling, and at present manager of La Belle Iron works, was born at 
Philadelphia, October 21, 1829.  He is of Quaker parentage and his 
father was a native of England and the mother of Scotland.  In his 
childhood Mr. Robinson lived until he had reached the age of twelve 
years, with his grandmother, who resided about four miles from 
Doylestown, Penn., and subsequently with his parents at New York, 
except an interval spent at Pittsburgh, until 1849, when he removed 
to Wheeling.  At Pittsburgh he had been engaged as an iron worker, 
and here he found employment in the Top mill, until the Belmont works 
were completed, and when he went to that establishment.  He was 
connected with the La Belle mill from the time of its erection, and 
was first made manager in 1868, having previously held the same 
position for year in the Chesapeake Iron works at Harrisburgh, Penn.  
In 1871 Mr. Robinson retired from the works, and until 1886 devoted 
himself to the tillage of a farm he purchased near Bellaire, and to 
stone quarrying and contracting.  At the latter date he resumed the 
management of the La Belle mill.  He is a stockholder in this 
company, to the success of which his notable ability as manager is 
fully devoted.  Mr. Robertson has been a member of the Presbyterian 
church since his twenty-first year, and is now an elder of the Third 
church of Wheeling.  He was married at Pittsburgh in 1849 to Sarah J. 
Oxley, who died in 1882.  Six(?) of their ten children survive:  Rev. 
E. S. Robinson, pastor of the Cannon City Presbyterian church; Col. 
George O., who lives one and a half miles west of Bellaire on his 
farm, and operates a coal mine and brick works extensively on the B. 
& O. railroad; William, druggist, of East Liverpool; Clarence, of 
Belmony county.  In 1884 Mr. Robinson was married to Mrs. Elizabeth 
Choen, of Bellaire.  


(Linda Fluharty)