the Loyalists in receipt of half-pay from the
British Government for a record of their services, to meet parliamentary
enquiry; it is marked on the back of the draft, in Colonel Robinson's
handwriting, as 'transmitted.' He died in this Island (formerly St.
John's Island, now Prince Edward Island) in 1808 or 1809. Colonel
Robinson was a native of Virginia, and emigrated from somewhere about
James River, in that province, to South Carolina, where he resided at
the commencement of the revolution. After a reward had been offered for
his life, as stated in his memorial, and he had been compelled to
abscond, a party of rebels visited his plantation and burned to the
ground his dwelling-house and every building upon it, scarcely giving
time to my grandmother (as she has often told me) to drag out of the
house her two female children in time to save their lives. My
grandmother was a woman of heroic spirit, and she, accompanied by a
single faithful negro slave, made her way on horseback, in an overland
journey of several hundred miles, to East Florida, where she joined her
husband. In this journey she carried one of her children before her on
the same horse, and the negro man carried the other in the same way on
the horse he rode.

"At the termination of the contest, my grandfather's property, a large
and valuable one, was confiscated by the victors, and he embarked with
his family for the island of Jamaica, was unfortunately shipwrecked by
the way, and lost every particle of property he had left, he, his wife
and children, with difficulty escaping drowning. After a short residence
in that island he emigrated to St. John's, in the Province of New
Brunswick, and ultimately came to this island.

"He was a member of the House of Assembly of this colony, and its
Speaker afterward; an Assistant-Justice of the Supreme Court, and member
of the Executive Council, such Council at that time also exercising
legislative functions. These last-named offices of Judge and member of
Council he held up to his decease.

"I was much too young at his death to be enabled to say anything of my
personal knowledge of him; but from his papers which I have perused, I
am warranted in saying that he was a man of a refined mind, an excellent
classical scholar, with a great taste for astronomy, and possessing no
ordinary talent in that science, which seems to have amused and occupied
his mind in his latter years. The only reward he received was the
half-pa