Fatima Robbins
Caesar Robbins’ Daughter-in-law
1786 – 1873, 86 years
WOMEN’S LEGAL RIGHTS
Fatima Oliver was part of a large, mixed-race family whose members lived in nearby communities. Fatima married Peter Robbins in 1824, but by 1831 Peter had moved to a nearby farm, where he eventually fathered 13 children with one of Fatima’s relatives. Fatima filed for divorce in 1837 when a law passed that made adultery no longer an offense punished by imprisonment.
Fatima’s divorce was granted, and in her settlement she retained the rights to the west side of the Robbins House and one-third of the Robbins farm. After her divorce, Fatima sold her rights to the property and moved out of the Robbins house.
DOMESTIC WORKER
Fatima remained in Concord for the rest of her life, working at times as a domestic servant and boarding in rooms where she received some support from the Concord Overseers of the Poor.
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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)