The collection consists primarily of letterpress books recording copies of outgoing correspondence. There is a partial calendar to some of the letters compiled by a descendant, Arney Robinson Childs in 1964 and a diary written in 1852-1853 while living in New England, with the last entry noting his departure for Michigan.
Many of the letters reflect the operations of his business enterprises and related matters--land speculation, dealing in mining stocks, the difficulties of procuring labor and supplies, shipping on the lakes, the almost insurmountable hardships of overland transportation into new country. But, since many of the letters are personal ones, they record much about the manners and customs of the day: in New England, where Robinson kept in touch with his childhood acquaintances; in the frontier west, described vividly in letters sent back east; and in Michigan, which remained home base for him and his family until his death on his farm at Pontiac in 1904.
S. S. Robinson, a descendant of early New England colonists, was born in 1824 in New Hampshire, where as a young man he worked as a school teacher, stone mason, and bridge builder. Moving to the Upper Peninsula about 1850 [1853], he made himself a mining expert through study and experience. His first charge was the Sharon and Derby mine in present Gogebic County. From 1860 to 1865 he was manager of the Quincy mine near Hancock. He later operated silver mines in Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico.
Robinson's mining career was interspersed with periods of bridge building. As superintendent of the Detroit Bridge and Iron Works in the early 1870's, he constructed railroad bridges at St. Joseph, Missouri, Huntington, Indiana, Chicago, and elsewhere in the Middle West. He died on his farm at Pontiac in 1904.
