Caesar Robbins
c. 1745 – 1822, 77 years
FIGHTING FOR INDEPENDENCE
Enslaved at birth in nearby Chelmsford, Caesar Robbins served in two wars. At 16, he served in the French and Indian War; his enslaver received his payment. In his early 30s, Caesar fought in the Revolutionary War and gained his emancipation. In 1776, Caesar served under Captain Israel Heald to fortify Boston’s Dorchester Heights. In August 1776 he marched to Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York, and enlisted for the last time in 1779.
FREEDOM AND FAMILY
1784 records show that Caesar, age 40, was the head of a household in Carlisle. By 1790, he was farming and living on a small plot of land in Concord owned by Humphrey Barrett. Caesar married twice and had six children. He died in 1822. The following year, his son Peter Robbins purchased over 13 acres and this newly built home from Barrett. In 1823, Caesar’s children Peter and Susan became the first residents of the Robbins house.
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![Did you know that April is National Poetry Month? We have you covered with a little Robbins house trivia. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a poem entitled Peter’s Field. Peter’s Field most likely referenced Peter Hutchinson, who was the last African American owner of The Robbins House. Peter purchased the home in 1852 and lived with his wife, Nancy, and several of their children in the home until 1868. Emerson described Peter’s farm, and by extension the original area of farmland attached to The Robbins House out in the Great Field like this:
KNOWS he who tills this lonely field
To reap its scanty corn,
What mystic fruit his acres yield
At midnight and at morn?]
That field by spirits bad and good,
By Hell and Heaven is haunted,
And every rood in the hemlock wood
I know is ground enchanted.
[In the long sunny afternoon
The plain was full of ghosts:
I wandered up,
I wandered down,
Beset by pensive hosts.
For in those lonely grounds the sun
Shines not as on the town,
In nearer arcs his journeys run,
And nearer stoops the moon.
There in a moment I have seen
The buried Past arise;
The fields of Thessaly grew green,
Old gods forsook the skies.
Happy Reading!](https://robbinshouse.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)