In 1916, the author of Makers of America: Biographies of Leading Men of Thought and Action, Vol 2, stated that Edward Trent Robinson was “one of the foremost figures in the present day life of the flourishing little city of Lexington.”  Robinson was my fourth cousin three times removed. He was my great grandmother Ida Willson Fultz's fourth cousin.  And I doubt that they knew they were related, even though they lived in the same county and may have had business dealings with one another.

Robinson was born 28 July 1865 in Richmond, Virginia, the son of Samuel Couch and Margaret Ann Graham Robinson. His father was an iron manufacturer and bank president—a prominent man in Richmond. Robinson was educated by private tutors at home, and finished his studies at the Fancy Hill Classical School, at Fancy Hall, Virginia. Soon afterward, he began farming near Natural Bridge. He organized the firm of Robinson and Hutton, coal dealers, which morphed into the Robinson Supply Company, Inc. with the motto of "everything for the farm." Robinson also became vice-president and director of the Rockbridge Building and Loan Association, president of the Lexington Retail Merchants

Association, a member of the Lexington Presbyterian Church, and a member of the

Masons. 

In Lexington, Virginia, on 11 September 1889, Robinson married Mary Kercheval Monroe.  They had three children.