“R” Extra Documentation
From: The Men Connected to Colchester, Connecticut Who Served During the Civil War, 1861-1865; by Norman J. Dupuis and Irene A. Watson, © 2023, pages 106-107
Myron W. Robinson Myron Robinson was born in Lebanon, Connecticut on May 4, 1839. As a young man he studied medicine under Dr. Adam G. Craig of Hebron, and graduated from Berkshire Medical College in 1861, after which he practiced for nine months in Hebron. He was 23 years old when he enlisted in Hebron as a Private in the 18th Regiment, Company C on August 16, 1862, and was promoted to a Hospital Steward on November 16, 1862. He was commissioned Assistant Surgeon on May 11, 1863, and assigned to the 6th Regiment. He was later promoted to Surgeon on December 21, 1864. During the typhus fever epidemic of 1865, he was placed in charge of Hillhouse Hospital in Wilmington, North Carolina, and mustered out on August 21, 1865.
A book with letters from Robinson’s Civil War service is entitled, Robinson, Dr. Myron W., Letters and Journal of a Civil War Surgeon, was published by Pentland Press, Raleigh, 1998. It was edited by Stewart J. Petrie, one of Robinson’s descendants who had this to say about his ancestor. “Surgeon Myron W. Robinson had a sardonic humor about living through trench warfare with his medical staff.”
This is illustrated in one of Myron Robinson’s letters in which he wrote, "I am now lying in a cave or 'Bomb Proof' on a stretcher with seven men lying around on the ground to assist me in case of any necessity. I think that with my little company I can defend and hold the 'Bomb Proof' unless we are attacked, in which case they all assure me that they are very good runners and of my own fleetness of foot, I need no more demonstration than when I was some ways away from my 'hole.' I think my speed would have equaled if not excelled that of the ancient 'Spartans' as I ran into my nest so cozily built under ground.”
In the summer of 1865, he settled in Colchester, Connecticut where he worked as a physician for 34 years. He married Emma Stewart of Portland, Connecticut in 1867 and they had three children, one of whom died in infancy. The Colchester Historical Society notes that in 1881, Dr. Robinson and his wife bought a house on the corner of Clark Lane and Broadway. The property was known as the Coggeshell-Robinson House due to the two families who had owned it.
Dr. Robinson was also a member of the GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) Civil War veterans organization. In addition to his Colchester connections, later in life he was also a member of the Norwalk GAR, and a medical director of the GAR department of Connecticut.
According to Weld, Stanley B., who wrote, Connecticut Physicians in the Civil War, (Hartford: Connecticut Civil War Centennial Commission, 1965) Robinson pursued postgraduate study at Bellevue Hospital Medical College. He also served as health officer at Colchester, was President of his County Association in 1895, and was Medical Director of the Department of Health Connecticut for three terms, 1884-1885, 1890 and 1895.
In 1899, he was appointed resident physician of the Fitch Soldiers’ Home in Noroton Heights in Darien, near Stamford, Connecticut where he and his wife Emma lived out the rest of their lives. She preceded him in death in 1909, followed by his passing on May 27, 1912. They are both buried in Linwood Cemetery, Colchester, Connecticut.