O'NEIL WATSON ROBINSON First Owner of the Robinson House
by Stanley R. Howe
O'Neil W. Robinson (1797-1867)
As certain as can be currently determined, the Broad Street building
acquired by the Society in 1998 was built about 1821 by O’Neil Watson
Robinson, who was born in Chatham, New Hampshire, 21 September 1797,
the son of
Increase and Mary Cox Robinson. According to a document quoted in
Lapham’s History of Bethel,
Robinson’s name was listed on a petition
from Bethel to the Massachusetts Governor for permission to form a
regiment and to elect officers dated 29 December 1815. In his
genealogical section, Dr. Lapham notes that Robinson was here prior to
Maine
statehood or just afterward. Since Robinson's house was
apparently constructed
ca. 1821, the earlier date may be more likely, as he may have met his
future wife, Betsey Hilton Straw, while she was visiting her sisters,
Agnes Straw Mason and Abigail Straw Hastings, who lived on
Broad Street in a southerly direction from the Robinson House.
O'Neil Robinson
established a general store next to his residence and also became a
licensed retailer of spiritous liquors after he won
approval at the 1821 Bethel town meeting. On 27 December 1833,
Robinson became
Bethel’s second postmaster following the resignation of Dr. Moses
Mason, who was leaving for Washington to assume his duties as United
States Congressman from Maine. Robinson’s “liberal” temperament,
politically, was also in evidence in matters of faith, since he is
listed
as a founder of the Universalist Society. In 1835, he sold his
house
and store to Robert Chapman, resigned as postmaster and moved to
Portland for a time, and then Waterford. He served as a Justice
of the
Peace during his Bethel days and represented the town in the Maine
House of Representatives in 1832. Becoming Sheriff of Oxford
County
in1843 while living in Waterford, he continued in that post until
1850.
He owned large tracts of land along the Androscoggin in the towns of
Gorham, Berlin, Milan, and Dummer, New Hampshire. He and his wife
had
six children; they are buried with four of them in the front row of
Bethel’s Woodland Cemetery.