Joel Walter Robison A Texas Legislator

Footprints Of Fayette

Fayette County is one of the most historic counties in Texas. In this weekly feature from the County Historical Commission, a rotating group of writers looks back at local history.

Joel Walter Robison was born October 4, 1815 in Georgia to John Galimore and Frances Robison. The family moved to Monticello, Florida, where in 1826 John G. Robison was named as the area’s first postmaster. The Robison family including Joel and his sister Sabrina and her husband Stephen Townsend immigrated to Texas in 1831. Trouble with Mexico caused Joel and his father to enlist in the volunteer army and participate in several decisive battles, the first at Velasco in June 1832. In 1833 the family moved to a farm on the west bank of Cummins Creek near Round Top. Joel had a “strong predilection for adventure” and for the next three or four years devoted most of his time to the defense of the frontier against the Indians and Mexicans.

By August of 1835 war with Mexico was imminent to secure freedom for Texas. Joel joined the Texas Army on September 30, 1835, and participated in the Battles of Gonzales, Concepcion and Bexar in the fall of 1835. At the battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, Private Joel Walter Robison of Company F, served under the command of Colonel Edward Burleson in the First Regiment, Texas Volunteers.

At sunrise on the day after the battle, Joel Robison was in a detachment sent out to pursue the fugitive enemy. Six men were in his group when they discovered a Mexican soldier standing in the prairie. As they approached him he sat down on a small bundle. He was dressed in citizens clothing; a blue frock coat and pants. The prisoner was put on a march back to the Texan camp some eight miles away. He walked slowly and apparently in pain. After several miles he stopped and said he could walk no further. Several of Joel’s comrades wanted to kill him but Joel’s “compassion for the prisoner moved me to mount him behind me”. Joel was the only man in the group who could speak Spanish and the two conversed at length on the way back to camp. When they arrived at the part of the camp where the prisoners were being kept they were astonished to hear them exclaiming “El Presidente! El Presidente!” Joel and his company had captured General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.

Joel was in possession of the small bundle Santa Anna had carried and when he tried to return it, the General gave it to him in appreciation for the kindness Joel had shown him. The bundle contained a blanket, a white sheet, a fine grey cloth vest with gold buttons and a bottle-gourd. Joel brought the vest home and lent it to his friends to wear when they married. It was passed from groom to groom until it was finally lost and never returned. John G. Robison was elected to the First Congress of the Republic of Texas and attended the first session in Columbia from October to December 1836.

He returned home and in February 1837 set out with a younger brother to retrieve some groceries he had purchased for the family. They were about a mile from home when they were attacked by Indians. Joel went looking for them and found the cart and oxen standing in the road but his father and uncle were not there. A little further down the road Joel discovered buzzards gathering and there he found their bodies, stripped nude, scalped and mutilated.

Joel Robison married Emily Almeida Alexander on November 20, 1837, and they had seven children.

Fayette County was created by an act of the Second Congress of the Republic of Texas on December 14, 1837. Soon after the court system was created and Joel Walter Robison served on the first District Court and was a member of the first Grand Jury.

By 1860, Robison was a prosperous planter who valued his real estate at $25,000. From 1859 to 1861 he served in the House of Representatives of the Eighth Texas Legislature where he favored secession.

Emily Robison died November 23, 1886. Joel Walter Robison died at his home in Warrenton on August 4, 1889. He was an active Mason and was serving as second vice president of the Texas Veterans Association at the time of his death. Both were buried in the Florida Chapel Cemetery near Round Top but in 1932 their remains were moved to the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.