By Al Bates
In three previous articles I have shared with you some details about one of this area’s most prominent early settlers, Colonel King S. Woolsey, his political career and sudden death, the “Pinole Treaty’ battle and something about his two wives Lucia and Mary. However, there may have been an earlier wife, and here’s what I have been able to find.
When America’s Civil War started in 1861, “Colonel” Palatine Robinson was a prominent Tucson businessman and an active Arizona politician. His lovely and fair-complexioned wife, Sarah E. Robinson, was the belle of Tucson’s small Anglo community. Less than two years later, Palatine was a fugitive, a bail jumper on his way to Confederate Texas. He left Sarah behind in Union-occupied territory, perhaps never to see her husband again.
The Robinsons created quite a stir on their arrival in Tubac in late 1856. He was a 32-year-old native of Virginia, a “Colonel” by courtesy, while she was a 21-year-old Kentucky beauty of notable charm and intelligence – and one of only two white women for hundreds of miles.
Palatine was a dandy. He wore a plug hat, carried a cane and earned a reputation for violence. Sarah, on the other hand, dressed with taste, her manners were gracious and refined and she won the respect and admiration of all she met. Several travelers through the area noted Sarah with admiration in accounts of their journeys.
Colonel John C. Reid who visited the Robinson home in Tubac in 1857 wrote: “We acquired a high opinion of the amiability of Mrs. R., and were confirmed in the belief that the true woman in her principles, is not influenced by the incidents to change of locality.”
Another traveler, Pocion Way, who met Mrs. Robinson in Tucson in 1858 wrote: “She is very much of a lady and it does my eyes good to look at her after gazing at so many swarthy faces. She looks like she was out of her proper sphere – placed here by a kind providence to redeem this place from utter damnation.”
Business opportunities in Tucson had lured the Robinsons from Tubac in 1857. That year, Palatine formed a partnership with Charles Trumbell Hayden in a Tucson store called Hayden and Robinson Hardware. Robinson prospered, and in 1859 he bought out Hayden’s share.
By 1859 Robinson’s holdings in Tucson were extensive. He owned several small houses in town and three “splendid gardens” growing vegetables, fruit trees and vines. He also listed ownership in a large amount of the wheat crop growing in the Santa Cruz Valley. By his description, the Robinsons were living in “a large and elegant dwelling house, the best finished in the Territory and well furnished.”
Palatine was active in early efforts to separate Arizona from New Mexico. When petitions to the United States Congress went unanswered, the citizens of the Gadsen Purchase established their own provisional territorial government in April 1860, with Lewis S. Owings as governor and Palatine Robinson as adjutant general. Congress, in its infinite wisdom, chose to ignore this action as well.
At the start of the Civil War, the Union Army withdrew from the area, and intensified raids by both Indians and Mexican bandits drove miners and ranchers to flee for their lives. Once flourishing mines, ranches and farms were abandoned, and smaller communities such as Tubac were deserted. Palatine and Sarah were among the few Anglos who remained in Tucson.
Sarah and her husband were certainly among the residents of Tucson who cheered the arrival of a small confederate Army force in February of 1862. The joy for Confederate sympathizers was short-lived, however, for the Rebels abandoned Tucson four months later to the advancing Union forces led by General Carleton.
Carleton quickly imprisoned suspected Confederate sympathizers, including Palatine who was charged with recruiting troops for the rebel cause. He also was accused of a killing – the result of an argument over a card game—plus an attempted murder, and the abduction and selling of a 10-year-old Mexican girl. He was quickly transported to the stockade at Fort Yuma. His long-suffering, but ever-loyal Sarah, went with him.
Palatine arrived at Fort Yuma on crutches, whether from wounds suffered at the hands of Apaches (his story), or it may have been the result of a scrape with one of his neighbors. One of his keepers at Fort Yuma described him as “very thin and delicate,” but with a “restless and forbidding expression of the eyes.”
In October 1862, Palatine obtained his release by posting a $5,000 bail guaranteeing his appearance for trial and by swearing allegiance to the Union. He was still in the Yuma area in December of 1862, but then the record becomes muddy. He apparently jumped bail, heading to Texas by way of northern Mexico in order to avoid Union troops. The next and final known record of Palatine is one year later, in January 1864, at San Antonio, Texas, where he engaged in unsuccessful plots to reopen the Civil War in the West.
However, what became of "Sarah?” From surviving correspondence it appears that she was still with Palatine at quarters near Fort Yuma in December 1862. And then, nothing more.
How could such a well-known and widely admired lady vanish so completely? I think I have a partial answer, for there is one final trace of a lady that may have been she.
Arizona’s Territorial census of 1864 includes an Emma Robinson, apparently living at Colonel King S. Woolsey’s Agua Fria Ranch, site of today’s Young’s Farm at Dewey. With the exception that she apparently had shaded her age by three years (a not unusual feminine practice), this lady’s vital statistics – place of birth, time in Arizona – do match Emma with Sarah E. Robinson. She replied “Quien Sabe” to the census question about her marital status.
Additionally, in March 1864 an Associate Justice of the Arizona Territorial Supreme Court, Joseph Pratt Allyn, wrote of meeting an otherwise unknown “Mrs. Woolsey” at the Agua Fria Ranch.
Was that Mrs. Woolsey Emma Robinson? And was Emma actually the charming Sarah? If so, what became of her? There is no further trace of either Sarah or Emma just as there is no later trace of Sarah’s wayward husband Palatine.
The times were unsettled and unrecorded deaths in isolated areas – whether from illness, accident, or Indian attack – were common, but it seems a shame not to have closure on the fate of this uncommon lady.
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