James Fisher Robinson

Birth Date

1800-10-04

Death Date

1882-10-31

Gender

Race Description

White

Entity Type

Person

Twenty-second governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, banker, and legislator. Son of Jonathan Robinson and Jane Black Robinson. Married to Susan D. Mansell Robinson on December 26, 1821. Father of Emilie Jane Robinson and James F. Robinson, Jr. Married Willina S. Herndon Robinson on May 30, 1842. Father of Scott Herndon Robinson, John McCracken Robinson, George Sidney Robinson, Madison Johnson Robinson, Stephen Gano Robinson, Willa Ewing Robinson, Philip Eldon Robinson, and Stephen Gano Robinson. Educated at Forest Hill Academy and Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. Trustee of Georgetown College. President of the Farmers' Bank of Georgetown. Represented Fayette and Scott Counties in the Senate of the Commonwealth of Kentucky from 1851 to 1855. Owned thirty-five enslaved persons in 1860. Represented Fayette and Scott Counties in the Senate of the Commonwealth of Kentucky from 1861. Speaker of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Kentucky from September 3, 1861, to September 5, 1861. Speaker of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Kentucky from August 16, 1861, to August 18, 1862. Governor of Kentucky from August 18, 1862, to September 1, 1863. Returned to practicing law and farming on retiring from politics in 1863.

Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Slave Schedules, Kentucky, Scott County, District No 1, p. 216B, 230A.
Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Slave Schedules, Kentucky, Scott County, District No 2, pp. 235, 236, 252.
Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Slave Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, Louisville Ward 4, p. 266.
John David Smith, “James F. Robinson (1862-1863),” ed. Lowell H. Harrison, Kentucky’s Governors (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), 89-92.
William Henry Engle, Pennsylvania Genealogies: Scotch-Irish and German (Harrisburg: Lane S. Hart, 1886), 553, 556-7.

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