J. P. Robison.



Among the soldiers present at Braddock's defeat at Fort Duquesne, near
Pittsburgh, was John Decker Robison, an American of Scotch descent, who
also did good service during the Revolutionary war. When the war was over
he married a Hollander living on the North River, and when a young family
grew up about him, moved to western New York, where, building the first
house in Canandaigua, he received a patent of six hundred acres of land and
settled down as a farmer in Vienna, N. Y. One of his family was a boy,
Peter Robison, who stuck to the farm until the ex-Revolutionary soldier
had gone down to the tomb, and until he himself had reached several years
beyond the meridian of life, when he obeyed the general law of American
human nature, and moved toward the setting sun. Years before this step was
taken he had married Miss Hetty H. Havens, of Lyons, N. Y., and raised a
family of children, among them J. P. Robison, the subject of this sketch,
who was born in Ontario county, on the 23rd of January, 1811.

Like his father, young Robison spent the earlier years of his life in
working on the farm, and it was not until his sixteenth year that it was
decided to give him a good education. He was then sent to Niffing's High
School, at Vienna, N. Y., where he attained considerable proficiency in
his studies, including Latin and Mathematics. Having developed a taste for
medical studies he was admitted as a private pupil of Professer Woodward,
of the Vermont College of Medicine, and graduated in November, 1831.
Immediately on the completion of his studies he moved into Ohio and
commenced practice in Bedford, Cuyahoga county, in February, 1832. He soon
succeeded in building up a good practice, and for eleven years continued
in the exercise of his profession.