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Mine manager in the American west and northern Michigan. Letterpress books containing business correspondence detailing his work with the Quincy Copper Mine in Hancock, Michigan, as superintendent of the Detroit Bridge and Iron Works, and in Georgetown, New Mexico, and Twin River, Nevada; also include miscellaneous letters, and partial calendar to the letterpress books.

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.