Prologue
by Lois Robinson Dougherty

The opening page to her autobiography, The Story of My Life, which gives some of the family history as told to her by her father, Charles B. Robinson.

Notes on family history from Aunt Lois

Why do I set down this true, but fragmentary history of my life and brief sketches from the lives of those near to me?

Should you, my relative, friend, have the interest to take a backward look, I have tried to record in part, these facts, devoid of literary embellishments, for your record.

I believe our forebears were above the average in many points. To conquer fear, disappointment, the disadvantages of poverty, the pain of heartache. A people able to see beyond these. Builders of hopes, high ideals. Despite the frustrations and discomforts of pioneering, they built their lives into lives of enjoyment and high purpose. Any record may prove beneficial should one pause for the backward look.

I salute you from this point back. I salute you too, in the coming reaches of the years, my unknown, esteemed relative as I open the door a little way, toward your beginnings.

My great grand sire, David Robinson, I salute you. You crossed the mountain barriers in your covered wagon, with your family and friends. You helped push the line of civilization across the Appalachians, from your known setting to the unknown wilderness of Kentucky. The youngest member of this group of settlers was my grandfather, James Osborne Robinson, barely two months old at that time. Conqueror of loneliness, of trails and forests. First settlers. Fusing the hardships of trails with the beauty of skies and the blossoming wild flowers.

I salute you, my grandfather, James Osborne Robinson, in this new environment. Growing up in a new land, helping to clear the virgin timber and plant your crops in a fertile, new land. Early in your married life you fought, not only the hard ways of the early settler, you enlisted in the 8th Kentucky Infantry of the Army of the Cumberland. You fought in thirteen major battles fo the Civil war to help preserve this new country you were helping to build. It was my great privilege to know you in your later years as the kind and gentle patriarch that we all loved and honored.

I salute you, Charles B. Robinson, my own father, the bulwark of the lives of your wife and children. You have plowed ten thousand miles of straight, clean furrows in the loam of that same new land, to feed your hungry brood. You have plowed the oxen and hauled the logs to clear the land for your bread to grow in new grounds. Your span of ninety years of living made a bridge from the days of candlelight to the time fo the atomic age.

You are all strong bridges from the dim past to the shadowy future. A human span. So many of your seeds have been nurtured that your earthly immortality flows on in a mighty stream of humanity. A long strong file, linking you with the ancient boundaries of the past, projecting you into the limitless expanse of the future. The bright-dull threads of your lives are interwoven forever into the changing fabric of your country.

I see you in a new plowed field; I glimpse you in an old powder horn and flintlock rifle; you smile at me from the gloss of an old cherry cradle and you reach a hand from the weathered logs of a crumbling cabin.

KENTUCKY. No wonder you have become this great, proud commonwealth. Sacredly you hold, wrapped in your blood-purchased soil, the bones of such men. Cradled and smoldering. The ashes of these mightly oaks of virile manhood. Along with the strength and beauty of their mates, our pioneer mothers. Companions in sunbonnets who fought the hardships, shoulder to shoulder with you. They matched you with their courage, bearing their children in isolated cabins, drawing strength from the treadle of loom and sinews from the wielding of a hoe. You wove the beauty of the pine bloom into the fabric of your coverlets and pieced the loveliness of lilacs into your quilted Irish chains; stilled the small cry of your infant from the lurking shadow of the wildcat and the crouching form of the panther.

You walked uprightly.

Your path to the mountain spring was one of beauty and danger. How often your quick sense caught the glint of light on the coils of a serpent in time to prevent a tragedy. You instilled in your children the love of sunlight on a hill top, the delicate pink in the blossom of the mountain laurel and rhododendron.

Fathers and mothers, you have bequeathed us your traditions and your aspirations. For all this and you, we give thanks.

You were tired that day when you lay down to sleep your long, sweet sleep in the bosom of Kentucky.

Reverently, belatedly, I salute you.

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