For whom did our ancestors vote? What political movements did they support?
Although I personally know little about even the most recent of the past generations, I think there is evidence for the political opinion that prevailed in the household of William R. Robison and Asenath Mead in the mid-nineteenth century. It’s based on the fact that they named their sixth child (following Nelson, Julius Ceasar, William O., Andrew, and Laura), “Horace Greeley” Robison. Horace was born in 1851, as the alignments that would define the 1852 presidential election were taking shape, and just after yet another infamous “Missouri Compromise” was negotiated in 1850. In the thick of all that public controversy and positioning was our Horace’s namesake, Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, one of the most influential papers in the country and probably the most popular one in the Ohio River valley where the Robisons lived at that time.
Greeley and his paper were strongly anti-slavery and supporters of the Whig party platform which called for “internal improvements:” build bridges, roads, canals and ports, and generally invest in America, and avoid “foreign adventures” (i.e., things like attacking Mexico, etc.). He was a feminist, socialist, and mentor to a number of writers, artists and progressive thinkers. A great fan of settling the west, Greeley coined the nineteenth century meme often quoted since: “Go West, young man, and grow up with the country!” (That’s exactly what the Robisons were doing.) Later Horace Greeley helped found (and some think he named) the Republican Party, at that time the primary force for the abolition of slavery, enfranchisement of African Americans, and reconstruction of the previously rebellious South.
William R.’s own nickname, at least in the 1860’s, was “Yankee.” Since he was born in Ohio, not New England, this may also be a hint as to his political beliefs. (In the 1860’s, “Yankees” were the ones in uniform and on the march, heading south.) All three of William R. and Aseneth’s military-age boys — Nelson, Julius, and William O. — joined the Union Army during the Civil War.
So, were the Robisons of this generation Whigs (and then Republicans)? Ask yourself whether, at the next family reunion, you might permit yourself to draw inferences about cousins who show you their cute little baby, “Rush Limbaugh Robison” or “Michele Obama Robison”…