The William Sheridan Shelley Family of Jackson County MO:Information about Rodman Hazard Robinson
Rev DrR.H.Robinson Rodman Hazard Robinson (b. 26 Dec 1819, d. 19 Oct 1886)
Notes for Rodman Hazard Robinson:
The following Obituary was taken verbatimfrom the minutes of the Troy Annual Conference of the
Methodist Episcopal Church.Dated April 21---25, 1887
Rev. Rodman Hazard Robinson,D.D.,died at fort Plains NY October 19,1886,aged 66 years. An honored leader of the Lord's host has fallen in the fore front of the battle. We seem almost yet to hear the ringing of his armor as he falls beside the sacred altar where but a few ,minutes before he had been lifting up his voice like a trumpet and calling his people to a holy crusadeagainst the damning sin and peril of our times. Born in Newark ,Wayne County NY., December 26, 1819, he was converted to Christ in his sixteenth year, and in 1843 he was graduated from Union College a Bachelor of arts.In 1844 he married Elizabeth Ann Becker, of Chatham,NY., The same year beginning his work as an itinerant minister--a supply under the presiding elder. In1845he joined the Troy Conference and was continued
at Ticonderoga.During the forty-one following years he was appointed successively by the Bishops to sixteen charges; Whitehall, Orwell, Benson, Galway, Plattsburg, Pittsfield, Saratoga Springs, Amsterdam, Albany, Ballston, Cobleskill, Greenbush, West Troy, and Fort Plains---to three of these charges having been recalled a second time. In 1861 he served as Chaplain to the 32nd New York Volunteers, and was for four years Presiding Elder of Albany District. He was for some years Secretary to his Conference, and once chosen delegate to the General Conference. He had served in the ecclesiastical courts of his conference and of the General Conference board and committees; for many years he was an influential member of the boards of trustees of the Troy Conference Academy, Fort Edward Institute and the Syracuse University.Though giving his best powers, with an earnestness and efficiency rarely equaled,to the great duties of the Gospel ministry, fostering the Sunday-school, bringing sinners to Christ, instructing recruits and strengthening Zion,combating error and infidelity, seizing upon every fit occasion to instruct the masses of men in the duties of citizenship, carrying his counsels and prayers also into the civic order and societies, he had meanwhile been a model man of business; abhorring debt, bringing tact and order into official boards, pointing them to new church enterprises, showing them how to lift their burdens, and setting the example of always living within his income, besides saving a margin for benevolence and often another margin for wise investments.
What call of duty did he ever neglect?To what special occasion, to what exigency of the Church or of the times did he fail to prove equal? Surely such an extraordinary career of beneficent activity implies no common capacity and character.To do justice to that character by a wise analysis cannot in this brief memoir be attempted. Some features that are quite obvious may be mentioned.
To a vigorous native intellect of rare versatility and a singular ardent and active temperament was added a liberal education, which had thoroughly disciplined his powers and had formed in him habits of observation and study and order characterizing his whole life. He came to have something better than learning. His eager, alert mind was full of practical wisdom;he became a man of great sagacity, developing a talent for discerning the minds of men that rarely misled or disappointed him. His spirit was deeply devout, and he daily talked with God in his closet and in his study. He loved Little children and he had a tender reverence for age. In the personal intimacy of many years I have never heard from his lips a vile or an unchaste word, nor an uncharitable allusion to any of his brethren.
When he spoke to the people on the great themes of the gospel his soul quickly kindled into an earnest enthusiasm, but he never lost his self-Coman. He was a man that knew how to make up his mind, and, his course once decided upon,an inflexible will held all his power in glorious reward abeyance until the end was attained.
Constituted as he was, he could not but enjoy intensely his home, his friendships,his church work and associations. Often it was literally true that the joy of the Lord was his strength.
Is it any wonder that such a man,so endowed should be a Favorite pastor and a successful revival preacher, and that his labors should have been blessed in turning many to righteousness? His death makes a large vacancy in our ranks.How will his presence and influence be missed in the circle of his
home, in the church at which he was ministering, in the conference of his brethren. where he had responded to roll-call so many years, by the educational institutions that he cherished, by the beneficiaries of his lovingand generous bounty, and pre-eminently by the Round Lake Association, whose vast and complicated interests he was so wisely, safely and successfully administering!
For us who have been so suddenly and deeply bereaved it is fitting to mourn. We can not but condole with each other and with all to whom he was dear. Yet if we can but lift our minds above the consideration of our loss, and contemplate him and the assured achievements of his well-rounded and victorious life, following him as he goes to his glorious reward,we shall not be able to withhold our congratulations. Who of us have known so young a man at 66? What a vigorous grasp of affairs, what alertness, what burning zeal characterized him up to his last Sabbath noon!his form still erect, his eye undimmed, his natural forcescarce abated!It was his singular happiness to close his ministry at the Fort Plains Charge.Recalled after an interval of half a generation to preach to the children of his former converts, and to lead goodly numbers of people to Christ in that new and commodious and beautiful sanctuary, how deeply he enjoyed his church labors and associations we may know from the record written by his own hand on a leaflet dated June 30, which Mrs Robinson found on his study table, in which he gave an account of the remarkably melting influence of the spirit of God upon the exercises of a recent love-feast and communion, so that for some minutes he had been unable to go on and to complete his prayer.
And was it not of Heaven's mercy, not of wrath, that there near the close of the solemn and memorable public services of his last Sabath, after his people had thronged about him with hand-clasping and with words of loving appreciation and Gertude, he should fallen at his post, rather than that, smitten with paralysis, he should have been bidden to linger in helplessness and pain, turning his glazing eyes wistfully to those heights where he could no longer soar?
The illustrious Cicero, when struggling to suppress a great conspiracy, and Warned by friends that his life was in danger, is related to have said,"No man can die prematurely who has been First Consul at Rome".And dare we complain of the shortness of life of this favored servant of God who for forty-one years was an effective itinerant minister, the wide sweep of whose sixteen appointments, covering portions of three States and including both sides of Lake Champlain and the valleys both of the upper Hudson and the Mohawk, gave him access to a vast congregation aggregating many thousands and whose beneficent progress was marked by an unbroken line of thriving churches all the way from rocky
Ticonderoga to fertile Fort Plains, as the course of a great irrigating stream through a barren land may be traced by the greenness and growth on either bank?Well was there placed on his funeral casket a symbolic sheaf of ripened grain.The service of his last Sabbath was of the nature of a " Harvest Home "
---a day of rejoicing over the garnered spiritual fruits of the year;and it was at the close of these grateful and happy services, while the reverberations of the songs of victory yet lingered amid the arches of that fair temple of worship, that the chariot of God came for him!
Our harvest homes are so brief! A day, a week at most, and it is over; but our brother can now resume the interrupted joy in a heavenly harvest home of a thousand years! Nay,a thousand years is only the dawn of the reign succeeding, each days a thousand years.
Last winter, while I was a guest at the Fort Plains parsonage, Doctor Robinson one evening spreadupon the table some maps and cottage plans, and he and his wife, the faithful co-itinerant of his prolonged ministry,communicated to me that they were contemplating as a pleasant possibility of the future---when they would no longer be sent to live in a parsonage---that they might spend some winters in sunny Florida; but God had a better plan for him---to transfer him at once from the effective ranks to that
fairer clime where flowers never fade.
At the funeral as many as fifty clergymen , his conference brethren and other pastors of churches in the village and vicinity, joined the mourning household in their sad march from the parsonage to the church.
The spacious church was filled to its utmost capacity.Addresses commemorative of thelife and character and services of our brother were made by Rev. AndrewMcGilton McGilton and by Drs Griffin and King.
Through the considerate kindness of Superintendent Hammond, a railroad coach was provided to convey the remains and the accompanying friends and brethren from Fort Plains to the Albany Rural Cemetery, Where, with tender , loving hands was consigned to the grave all that was mortal of Rodman HAZARD. Robinson.
But while we have been weeping here there has been a joyful commotion up yonder at his accession to the shining ranks.Doubtless he has already been greeted and welcomed by many of those who have preceded him from the various scenes of his Christian labors; for from all his charges he had spiritual fruit.
God grant that we, too, my brethren , may share with him in the final harvest home!
More About Rodman Hazard Robinson:
Burial: Unknown, Albany Rural Cemetery, Albany,NY.
Military service: 31 May 1861, 32nd New York Vol, Chaplain.
Occupation: Minister of The Gospel,Methodist Episcopal.
US Army: 22 Feb 1862, Spec Order 52 Hd Qrs Army PotomacFeb 22,1862..
More About Rodman Hazard Robinson and Elizabeth Ann Becker:
Marriage: 1844