Oregon150

by Marcia Allen
Cottage Grove, OR

Born October 10, 1822 In Ohio, he was the youngest in a family of three sons and five daughters raised by a father who was an active church worker and a strict disciplinarian, as well as a large landowner.
He attended Western Theological Seminary in Allegheny, PA, and upon graduation was armed with his Bible and a metal tube containing his graduation diploma written in Latin on sheepskin- a true Minister of the gospel.
He planned to marry his intended wife, and leave for Oregon on the wagon trains that were forming in St. Jo, to serve as a missionary in the West, perhaps with Marcus Whitman. His wife-to-be however refused to think about such a life, so, he, without any provisions except his Bible volunteered to help drive and guard stock on the wagon train, in exchange for his food. Without a horse to ride, except for one borrowed when guarding the cattle and horses during the night, he walked to Oregon! He had a strong tenor voice, and led singing around the campfires at night with the aid of a tuning fork.
He kept a daily diary on the Trail, which the Robe family still has in their possession.
Upon arriving in Oregon, he signed the registry at the Umatilla Agency, August 25, 1851.
When he left the wagon train, he contacted the other two Presbyterian ministers in the Oregon Territory, and met with them to organize and establish the first Presbytery of Oregon. The boundary of the Oregon Presbytery was the Rogue River valley on the south, the foothills of the Rocky Mountains on the east, the Upper waters of the Columbia River and Puget Sound on the north. A single church of four members existed at the time, near Astoria. Rev. Robe sailed by steamer from Portland to San Francisco to register the church papers necessary. Upon his return to Oregon he taught a pioneer school for three months “in the wilderness” near Brownsville. He then moved to Eugene where he claimed a homestead, built a dwelling and married Eliza Walker recently come from Georgia.
He organized the First Presbyterian Church in Eugene under an oak tree on the S.W. corner of 10th and Willamette in 1855 and served as its pastor for the next ten years. At the same time, he served as an itinerant minister throughout the Presbytery and was often gone for long periods to assist the new immigrants by preaching, performing weddings, and burials, as necessary.
He was the first Superintendent of Lane County schools.
After ten years, in 1865 he moved to Brownsville to a church already established and served there thirty years, until his retirement in 1895. He organized the church in Crawfordsville during this time. To this day, a large Memorial window in the front of the Brownsville Presbyterian Church reads “Rev. Robert Robe” on red glass. It has lasted through two fires of the church.
He was the father of 11 children, seven of whom died in the dreaded diphtheria epidemics, for which there was no known medicine. He raised three sons and a daughter [who was my grandmother] and died in 1909 at the age of 86 years.