Peter Robbins
Caesar Robbins’ son
1792 – 1855, 63 years
PROPERTY OWNER
Peter Robbins bought this newly built farmhouse and over 13 acres for $260 in 1823. Peter, whose father Caesar Robbins had been considered property when he was enslaved for over 30 years, was able to purchase property—a significant achievement in one generation.
FARMER AND DAY LABORER
Described as “the big burly son of Caesar Robbins,” Peter worked as a farmer and seasonal laborer, selling timber from the trees on his land and the rye and
cranberries he grew.
TENANT FARMER
In 1824 Peter married Fatima Oliver; they lived here together until 1831. Peter then moved with his wife’s relative Almira Davis to a nearby farm, where they
had 13 children. Deeply in debt from mortgaging two farms, by 1835 Peter lost all his property to his creditors, but he soon leased it back, becoming a
tenant farmer. Peter and Fatima divorced in 1837 and she stayed on in the Robbins House, while Peter retained the rights to all the rye growing on the farm.
(representational image)
![Did you know that April is National Poetry Month? We have you covered with a little Robbins house trivia. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a poem entitled Peter’s Field. Peter’s Field most likely referenced Peter Hutchinson, who was the last African American owner of The Robbins House. Peter purchased the home in 1852 and lived with his wife, Nancy, and several of their children in the home until 1868. Emerson described Peter’s farm, and by extension the original area of farmland attached to The Robbins House out in the Great Field like this:
KNOWS he who tills this lonely field
To reap its scanty corn,
What mystic fruit his acres yield
At midnight and at morn?]
That field by spirits bad and good,
By Hell and Heaven is haunted,
And every rood in the hemlock wood
I know is ground enchanted.
[In the long sunny afternoon
The plain was full of ghosts:
I wandered up,
I wandered down,
Beset by pensive hosts.
For in those lonely grounds the sun
Shines not as on the town,
In nearer arcs his journeys run,
And nearer stoops the moon.
There in a moment I have seen
The buried Past arise;
The fields of Thessaly grew green,
Old gods forsook the skies.
Happy Reading!](http://robbinshouse.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)