Robinson, Greenleaf C.
Born: 1801-XX-XX New Hampshire
Died:
1873-05-15
Flourished: 1840 to 1873 Brown County, Illinois
Greenleaf C. Robinson, merchant and farmer, operated a business in West India goods in Boston in 1825. He was apparently residing in Kentucky around the time of his marriage to Sophronia Wilson in their native New Hampshire in 1832. The pair lived together in Kentucky before settling in Brown County, Illinois by 1840. He served as a precinct election judge in 1844, was elected a trustee of Mount Sterling the following year, and was a county commissioner, 1846-48. Abraham Lincoln twice represented the plaintiffs in lawsuits involving debts where Robinson was the defendant. At the time of the 1860 census Robinson owned real estate valued at $5,000 and possessed personal property valued at $500. He and his wife had children.
The Boston Directory (Boston: John H. A. Frost and Charles Stimpson, Jr., 1825), 226; New Hampshire, U.S., Marriage Records, 1700-1971, February 1832, (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2021); New-Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette (Concord), 27 February 1832, 3:3; U.S. Census Office, Sixth Census of the United States (1840), Brown County, IL, 159; Combined History of Schuyler and Brown Counties, Illinois (Philadelphia: W. R. Brink, 1882), 121-22, 131, 250; For Lincoln’s cases in which Robinson was a participant, search “Robinson, Greenleaf C.,” Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), http://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Brown County, IL, 101; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Brown County, IL, 19; U.S. Census Office, Ninth Census of the United States (1870), Mount Sterling, Brown County, IL, 20; La Cygne Weekly Journal (KS), 4 August 1888, 3:2-3; The Cemeteries of Brown County, Illinois 1825-1972 (Astoria, IL: Stevens, 1975), 233, 264.