Joel Walter Robison

Joel Walter Robison (October 1815 – August 4, 1889) was a Georgia native and a fighter in the Texas Revolution. Years later, he served a single term in the Texas House of Representatives.

Biography

Born in Washington County in east central Georgia not long after the conclusion of the War of 1812, Robison relocated with his family in 1831 to Brazoria County in southeastern Texas. He and his father, John G. Robison, fought in the Battle of Velasco in Brazoria County in 1832, the first pitched clash between Anglo settlers of Texas and Mexican soldiers. The next year the Robisons moved to Fayette County on Cummins Creek of the southern Colorado River. In the revolution, Robison participated in the siege of Béxar in San Antonio, the Grass Fight south of San Antonio, and the Battle of Concepción at Mission Concepción in San Antonio, with Texian Army insurgents led by James Bowie and James Fannin.^[1]

Robison was first a private under Captain William Jones Elliot Heard (1801–1874) and Colonel Edward Burleson at the Battle of San Jacinto in Harris County on April 21, 1836, six weeks after the Battle of the Alamo. He was with the group which captured General Antonio López de Santa Anna at San Jacinto. López de Santa Anna was reported to have ridden into Sam Houston's camp riding double on Robison's horse. On December 14, 1836, with independence achieved, Sam Houston commissioned Robison a first lieutenant in the Texas Ranger Division.^[1]

Robison and his Kentucky-born wife, the former Emily Almeida Alexander, whom he wed in 1837, had seven children. In 1840, Robison was elected commissioner of the Fayette County land office. At the time he owned nearly seven thousand acres in the county. Jerome B. Alexander, his brother-in-law, was killed in the 1842 Dawson massacre, in which thirty-six Texan militiamen were killed by Mexican soldiers. The slaughter prompted the retaliatory Mier Expedition.^[1]

In 1860, at the age of forty-four, Robison was elected as a Democrat to the Texas House of Representatives from Fayette County.^[2] He supported secession from the United States and the newly-established Southern Confederacy. From 1870 to 1879, he and one of his sons owned and operated a store in Warrenton, an unincorporated community in Fayette County. In 1875, near the close of the Reconstruction era, Robison was elected to the state constitutional convention.^[1]

Robison died in 1889, two years after the passing of his wife, at his home in Warrenton. First buried at the Florida Chapel Cemetery near Round Top in Fayette County, the Robisons were re-interred in 1932 at the Texas State Cemetery in the capital city of Austin. Robison was a member of the Masonic lodge and an officer at the time of his passing of the Texas Veterans Association.^[1]

In the 1962 episode "Davy's Friends" of the syndicated western television series, Death Valley Days, narrated by Stanley Andrews, the actor Tommy Rettig, formerly of the original Lassie series, played Robison. In the story line, Robison, called a "friend" of Davy Crockett, is sent on a diversion but quickly shows his military ability. Stephen Chase (1902–1982) played Sam Houston, and Russell Johnson was cast as Sergeant Tate in this segment.^[3]

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