John Bell Robinson, merchant and medicine man
by Tim Campbell · first published 10 July 2017 · his original post
John Bell Robinson was born in 1861, the son of Dr. William Simpson Robinson of Dresden. John grew up in the big old plantation house that used to sit in the southeast corner of what is now FM 55 and FM 744 in Dresden. John married Minnie Blair and this couple settled in nearby Blooming Grove. The attached photo of the Robinson family was taken about the year 1900. Pictured with John and Minnie Robinson are their daughters, left to right, Lucy, Frances, and Ethel, and standing in the rear is their son Hugh. John Bell Robinson was a merchant in Blooming Grove and tried his hand at several things. One of them was the bottling and sale of a proprietary medicine. I have 2 bottles that were found in the Blooming Grove area that contained John's medicine. Both are marked boldly on the face "J.B. ROBINSON and CO, BLOOMING GROVE, TX". On the base is a patent date of 1888. One of the bottles was found near old White Church Cemetery when I was a boy. The other I found when I dug my swimming pool at 308 S Kerr, behind the Dr. James Alexander Greene home. John B. Robinson eventually moved to Sour Lake, Texas where he was tax assessor-collector for the Sour Lake School District and a prominent citizen in that town. He passed away in the 1930s and is buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Corsicana.
This piece was published without a title. The one above was written here; the words below are his.