DOBBINS CEMETERY - VERMONT, FULTON CO., ILLINOIS

Robert Boyd Dobbins and the Dobbins Cemetery full of Immortal Dobbins Nobodies.

Not all cemeteries have a lock on the land they fill.  When I was a little kid growing up in Whittier California, there was a wonderful cemetery near our house that my dad often took my sis and I walking thought.  Mother did not like cemeteries, and she wasn't crazy about daddy taking us there; she always said it is sacrilegious to walk over graves.  But dad was respectful of those buried there, and the only reason he let us walk up to the headstones was he was teaching us the letters of the alphabet by having us touch the letters in the words and say what they were ' H, E, R. E.  L. I. E. S...."

and eventually we began knowing the letters and putting them together into words.

Many years later I had occasion to be in Whitter and I drove to that cemetery.....but it wasn't there anymore.  In its place was "Pioneer Park" and a single large stone with names inscribed on it.  I was SO disappointed.  

In the prairie area of Illinois not too far from the Spoon River the Dobbins Cemetery still stands.  Like many rural cemeteries, it was set aside buy Rev. Robert B. Dobbins when he bought property in Illinois after retiring as a circuit riding Presbyterian minister who covered Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.  He bought enough property to give each of his children a farm when he died.  All the people buried in this cemetery are related to Robert B. Dobbins and his wife Katy Alexander Dobbins.  And thus to me.

Just in the event that this cemetery disappears, I want to put the names of all these Immortal Dobbins Nobodies in my blog today.  There are a couple of people that I do not recognize, but I am sure there was a reason they were there.  

DOBBINS FAMILY CEMETERY

VERMONT TOWNSHIP, FULTON COUNTY, ILLINOIS

Robert B. Dobbins, b Aug 23, 1773 d in 82^nd y of his age

Catherine Alexander, wife of Robert B. Dobbins, d Nov 18, 1849 74y 6m

FAMILY OF JAMES A. DOBBINS

               Robert Gaston, son of James Alexander & Elizabeth Perkins Dobbins, d July 28, 1851 23y 1m 9d

               Emma S., dau of Levi J. & Paulina .Jane Dobbins  Sperry d Sept 13, 1852 7m 24d

               Olive Alvira Winton b June 19, 1862 d Dec. 21, 1885 (Olive is daughter of Caroline Elizabeth

                               Dobbins Winton)

FAMILY OF ELIZA DOBBINS THOMAS

               William Thomas d June 8, 1882 81y 11m 25d

Eliza Dobbins, wife of William Thomas, d Feb 25, 1894 87y 2m 4d

John F., son of William.A. & M.S. Kost Thomas d Jan 12, 1848 3y 3m 7d

FAMILY OF MARY GAGE DOBBINS MILLER

               Abram Miller d Dec. 5, 1889 85y 4m 14d

Mary Gage Dobbins., wife of Abram Miller, d Apr 16, 1891 82y 7m 13d

Addie, dau of J.C. & A.F. Cadwalader, d Apr 1, 1863 3y 3m 9d

FAMILY OF JOHN CALVIN DOBBINS

James H., son of John  C. & Harriet A. Miller Dobbins d June 20, 1842 1y 8m

Laura C., dau of John C. & Harriet A. Miller Dobbins d Nov. 22, 1858 2y 18d

William A. Dobbins  (son of John C. & Harriet A. Miller Dobbins)  Sept. 1863 age 28y

FAMILY OF ROBERT NEWTON DOBBINS

               Robert Newton Dobbins b Jan 20, 1814 d March 26, 1892

Martha J. Ewing, wife of Robert Newton Dobbins, b 19 Sept. 1819 d 22 June 1891

               Ady Clemens b May 15, 1839 d Feb 14, 1914

Mary J. Dobbins., wife of Ady Clemens, (dau of Robert Newton &

Martha Jane Ewing Dobbins)   b Aug 30, 1845 d Mar 9, 1908

               Martha L, dau of Robert.Newton & Martha Jane Ewing Dobbins d Apr 1, 1862 6y 11m 1d

Eliza M., dau of Robert Newton & Martha Jane Ewing Dobbins d Jan 23, 1860 1y 11m 23d

Catherine E., dau of Robert Newton & Martha Jane Ewing Dobbins, d Oct 9, 1854 11y 5m 7d

James Ewing d Mar 8, 1869 89y 7m 28d

Jannat, wife of James Ewing d Sept 8, 1854 70 y

Eliza Amelia Ewing d Apr 20, 1880 65y 2m 14d

Fanny J. Clemens b Dec. 22, 1892 d Mar 29, 1908

James, son of A. & M.J. Clemens d Apr 2, 1866 (age illegible)

FAMILY OF AMANDA JANE DOBBINS MILLER

Phyletus N. Miller, son of Jacob. & Amanda Miller, d Oct 21, 1863 19 yr 7m 7d

Jacob Miller, d Aug. 30, 1894 79y 8m 24d

Amanda J. Dobbins Miller, his wife, d Feb 22, 1894 76y 6m 18d

Eliza Miller, 1848-1910

Charles O. Hickson,, d Nov. 3, 1888 29y 5m 8d

Caroline J  Hickson (dau of Jacob & Amanda., wife of Charles O. Hickson,) b Jan 6, 1853

d June 19, 1915

               Clyde M. Hickson,  b June 21, 1887 d March 13, 1968

FAMILY OF WILLIAM STEVENSON DOBBINS

               William S. Dobbins d Jan 25, 1847 25y 8m 27d

UNIDENTIFIED

               Ann Eliza O’Brien d Sept 24, 1852 age 41y  ( Anne appears with Levi J. Smith family on the 1850  census – age 38.  No relationship shown.  Born in N.Y.  Also an 18 year old Ann O'Brian with her.  

SPECTACLES TALK!

Dobbins Family

REV. ROBERT B. DOBBINS

Excerpt from a letter to me dated September 27, 1997 from Carl H. Peterson, Ph.D. - a friend, a cousin, a descendant in-law of Robert B. Dobbins and a retired college History Professor:

"…I learned something yesterday that may be of interest to you.  I was lecturing on New England church history and had prepared an overhead of the 1670s woodcut by John Foster of the Rev. John Davenport of New Haven.  I asked my colleague Larry Bryant what it was that Davenport was holding between his fingers.  As I had guessed, Larry identified them as spectacles, but he added that they were a "signature gesture," an iconographical convention intended to identify the subject as a studious clergyman.  He showed me a painting by Van Eyck which is supposed to have been the first painting of eyeglasses ever done and which was the origin of this convention.  It seems that when the Rev. Robert B. Dobbins had his picture taken he knew exactly how it should be done."

Rev. Dobbins (whose middle name was Boyd, as shown on a deed he executed in Fulton County, Illinois) was active in the ministry from his Ordination in 1804 until his death in 1854.  He will be given a blog write-up soon.  He was my 4th great grandfather.

JAMES ALEXANDER DOBBINS 1805-1873

~THE DOBBINS FAMILY~


James "Jim" Alexander Dobbins, oldest son of Robert B. and Catherine Alexander Dobbins, asked for and received a letter of Dismission in 1856 from his home church in Fulton, Illinois (Bennington Presbyterian Church in Ipava) and headed off somewhere with his family, according to church minutes left by his pastor father. He and his family left no family bible and no one at a Dobbins family reunion in 1911 left any notes about him. He died long before Death Certificates had come into use. Documenting his life has been hard, frustrating, and mostly unrewarding.

He had a wife, Elizabeth, and four children - Robert Gaston, Paulina Jane, Elizabeth Caroline and James Sellers. I can tell you interesting stories about all of his children, but not about him. The picture was given to me by Percy Dobbins, my dad's cousin, and it had been handed down to him from his father. At the time I received it, no one in the family even knew what his name was or anything at all about him. Even if I haven't found out much about his life, at least I now have a name for him.

Jim was the first child of Robert and Catherine, born in Ohio in 1805. His father was a circuit-riding Presbyterian minister whose territory encompassed Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. While he was out ministering, it was up to his wife and children, (predominately Jim, being the oldest) to run the family farm in Clermont county, which provided for their needs and also provided money to sustain his father's ministry.

In 1826 the Clermont County marriage books show the following:



In 1835 Rev. Robert Dobbins bought acreage in Fulton County, Illinois, and he and his now-mostly married children moved there. Rev. Dobbins retired from the circuit riding but he established a local Presbyterian church, composed mostly of his own family members, and in 1837 the church records show that Jim's youngest son, James Sellers Dobbins, was baptised by his own grandfather, the Rev. R. B. Dobbins.
Those same records indicate that at two different times Jim asked for and received a request to remove the family from the church in good standing. The first time was in this same year (1837) and they were gone for four years before returning. In 1851 Jim's oldest son died. In 1856 Jim asked for and received a letter of dismission again; this was after the old Rev. died, and I'd guess Jim now felt free of the burden required of the oldest child. He took his family, just as his own father had, and traveled west, settling in the tiny town of Prairie City in Kansas, just a tinch southwest of Lawrence. No sooner did he get established there than his wife died, his oldest daughter died in childbirth, his second daughter married and headed east with her husband, and his youngest son associated himself, by his own admission, with old John Brown.

It is at this point that James Alexander Dobbins pretty much disappears off my screen. Many of the Douglas County records are missing because of all the problems that area had during the early settlement of Kansas, but it was in one recorded deed in the Douglas County Deed book that I was able to find him again. In 1871 he sold property he owned in Lawrence to the leaders of the Presbyterian Church and the deed showed he was in Maineville, Warren County, Ohio; the deed also showed he had a wife named Eliza Dobbins. A subsequent check of the marriage record showed that he had, in 1861, married the widow Eliza Gant.

Jim died in 1873. I know absolutely nothing of those final years. I have always had the feeling that this fellow, my great-great grandfather, did not have such a happy life. Too many deaths. Too many burdens. And I have always hoped that he found happiness with Eliza; nothing would make me happier than finding an obituary that said so -- but he is as remote at the end of his life as he was during it.

The one thing I have always treasured is a hand-written family chart that was sent to me many years ago by a distant relative I found back in Illinois. It is dated 1922 and is the only record I have that places James Alexander Dobbins in with the rest of the Robert B. Dobbins kids. It's not the kind of proof I would like, but I do believe it to be factual. This fancy chart was drawn then from a simple chart that had been generated at the 1911 reunion; on the older one, James Dobbins was called "Jim." So I've always felt confident that I could put my finger on the name "James" and say "He's mine!" And because of the picture, know what he looked like.