Maryland tends to be a place people stay. Generation after generation tend to be found living on the same land or just down the street. And surnames often tell the tale. Robinette and House, for instance, are two familiar Allegany County names, and their histories go back to the 18th century.
George C. Robinette, who fought in the Revolutionary War, rising to the rank of captain, was the first Robinette to settle on Allegany land. In 1778, the General Assembly of Maryland “reserved all unpatented lands westward of Fort Cumberland for Maryland soldiers of the American Revolution.” Soldiers could claim the land by exercising “bounty land warrants” issued by the federal government in payment for their services in the Revolution. The warrants allowed the soldiers, or their heirs, to choose and claim the land they wanted.
Both Capt. George, and a fellow soldier by the name of Willian House, claimed side-by-side plots.
According to the National Register of Historic Places, House and Robinette built log houses on their respective land. House’s became William House Farm. Robinette’s, initially known simply as “Robinettes Lot,” subsequently became Breakneck Farm. Both became part of the Breakneck Road Historic District that was created in 1980. The historic district application inventory lists Robinette’s original house as being 18- by 18-feet.
The original log house still stands, but, as is often the case, was incorporated as additions as it telescoped out to accommodate the need for more space. The next two Robinette generations built their own homes on the land as well.
The genealogy site, Wikitree, documents that the second house was built by a Moses G. Robinette, ostensibly a “son of Captain George,” and that it is “ … a frame farm house with a large summer kitchen, and is still in the family, while the third, built by grandson George Tanner, is a substantial brick home.”
By 1850, however, some of the family had begun to spread. That year’s census of West Virginia lists a hotelkeeper named Moses J. Robinette, his wife, Jane E., and four children. By the 1860 census, two daughters had been added to the family.
The Civil War brought destruction to both his livelihood, his person and his family, and by the 1870 census, Moses had moved back to where he and at least two of his children had been born: Flintstone, Allegany County. Moses’ eldest son, George H., named after Captain George, stayed behind in the new state of West Virginia, as he had newly married.
George H. and his wife are known to have had two sons and two daughters, one of whom became Mary Elizabeth Robinette Biden, who became the wife of Joseph Harry Biden of Baltimore and grandmother to the current president of the United States.
Joseph H. dealt in oil, and his obituary tells that he managed the American Oil plant in Baltimore. His father was a stone mason, who had emigrated to Baltimore in 1820 and was the original immigrant of the Biden family. Barely two years later, he had married. His son, Joseph Robinette Biden Sr. married Catherine Eugenia Finnigan, who was herself a daughter of Irish immigrants.
Maryland families often reflect our continuing influx of new immigrants, as did the Robinette-Bidens, who created a family with Irish, French and English ancestors, and an American president. In other words, an American family … a Maryland family.