William Robert Robinson was born around 1830 in New York to Samuel Robinson and Alzada Willey. His father was a merchant and farmer who owned $10,000 of real estate and $1,500 of personal property by 1860. He grew up and attended school in Brooklyn, New York, before enrolling at the United States Military Academy in 1846. He failed his examinations in June 1848 and asked permission to “resign instead of being dismissed.” He subsequently studied medicine at the University of New York. He applied for a passport in May 1859, and his application described him as 5 feet, 11¾ inches tall, with light hair and hazel eyes. By 1860, he was living with his parents in Stanford, New York.

 

He moved to Texas around 1860 and developed a deep connection to his adopted state. In February 1861, he celebrated Texas’s secession from the Union, and he declared that “the North can never conquer the South. The attempt will lead to a war of extermination.” Two months later, he wrote that the “South will fight to the last.” He sided with the Confederacy and received a commission in the Texas Rangers. As he explained to his father, “My ambition is strong, and my courage will carry me through…All my life I have been an adventurer and have nothing but my life to lose.” He later expressed regret at his Confederate service. In November 1865, he explained that “I acted as I then thought right. My surroundings, interests, and some dear attachments were Southern. I now see my error.”

 

He moved to Marine City, Michigan, after the war and earned a living as a physician. In the 1870s, he returned to his mother’s household in Newark, New Jersey. He died in Newark on March 19, 1888.

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