Robinson

• formal_name:
• first_date: 1818
• last_date: 1819
• function: Publisher
• locales: Shepherdstown
• precis: Publisher of the American Eagle (1818-19) and the Potomack Register (1819) at Shepherds-town, both with a partner named Harper (202).
• notes: Publisher
  Shepherdstown
  Publisher of the American Eagle (1818-19) and the Potomack Register (1819) at Shepherds-town, both with a partner named Harper (202).
  Robinson is an enigmatic figure, as no record of his given name has yet been found, making any identification speculative. Given the date of his advent as a journalist in Shepherdstown and the partisan focus of his paper, this Robinson was most likely Israel Robinson (1773-1828), a Berkeley County merchant-planter who then represented the county in the House of Delegates. The grandson of a like-named settler who came to the Back Creek area in the late 1740s, Israel Robinson served in the Assembly four times (1817-18, 1818-19, 1823-24, 1824-25) with his second term matching the brief life of the Potomack Register.
  As no copies of the Register have survived, confirming this identification is impracticable, as is an identification of his partner Harper; he was probably Kenton Harper (203), the son of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, printer-publisher George Kenton Harper. the younger Harper had acquired the American Eagle in mid-1817 from its founder, John N. Snider (392), who had trained with the elder Harper; at about the time of the start of the 1818-19 Assembly, Harper shed his first unidentified partner, one Maxwell (283), to form a new alliance with this Robinson; by the following April, the pair had recast the Eagle as the Register, possibly to support Robinson's unsuccessful re-election campaign that spring; following his defeat, the Register was closed and Robinson evidently never conducted a paper again.
  
  
  No confirmed Personal Data yet found
  
  Sources: Imprints; Brigham; Norona & Shetler; Bicentennial Register of the General Assembly; election results from A New Nation Votes website (elections.lib.tufts.edu).
  
• Related Bios:
  • Harper
  • Kenton Harper

This version of the Index of Virginia Printing was a gift from the estate of the site's creator, David Rawson. The content contained herein will not be updated, as it is part of the Library of Virginia's personal papers collection. For more information, please see David Rawson Index of Virginia Printing website. Accession 53067. Personal papers collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.