Rev. Robert Dobbins
Rev. Robert Dobbins, a pioneer of Adams County, was born in Northampton County, Pa., April 20, 1768. His father was William Dobbins, a native of Ireland. Young Robert was reared among the Friends in Pennsylvania, but in 1793 he united with the M. E. Church in which organization he became a noted divine. In his early manhood he worked on a farm and flatboated on the Ohio River. In 1791, he married Miss Jane Boyce, a native of Cannonsburg, Washington County, Pa., and in 1804 he removed with his family to the East Fork of Eagle Creek in Adams County, Ohio, where he purchased a farm now known as the Early farm. There he reared a family of ten children among whom was a son, William Dobbins, who was a noted school teacher in early days in Adams County. During his residence in Adams County, our subject rode the old Scioto Circuit and preached to the pioneer Methodist Societies in Brown, Adams, Scioto and Highland Counties. He was an associate of the Rev. James Quinn and Henry Bascom under Bishops Asbury and McKendree. It was Rev. Dobbins who successfully prevailed upon David Beckett to make a full confession at West Union on the morning of the day of his execution for the murder of Lightfoot, after Lorenzo Dow had exhausted his pursuasive powers on the condemned and had failed to elicit from him a confession of the crime with which he was charged.
Rev. Dobbins was a preacher of great force, and his magnetic powers in the pulpit were most wonderful. In the pioneer days of Methodism in Adams County, he and the Rev. John Meek conducted camp meetings on East Fork of Eagle Creek on the Richard Noleman farm where thousands gathered to drink in the word of God from the lips of those eminent divines.
In the year 1818, the wife of Rev. Dobbins died at Horse Shoe Bottoms on White Oak Creek in what is now Brown County, where he had removed after disposing of his farm on Eagle Creek, and on June 24, 1819, he married Miss Jennie Creed, a daughter of Mathew Creed, of Rocky Fork, Highland County, and soon thereafter removed to Greene County, Ohio. While a resident of that county he represented it in the Legislature from 1826 to 1829. In 1830, Rev. Dobbins associated him self with the Methodist Protestant Church because the office of Bishop in the M. E. Church had become repulsive to his democratic ideas of gov ernment.
In 1829, he removed to Sugar Creek, Fayette County, where he owned a large farm and where he spent the remainder of his eventful life. In 1844 he was elected by the Whigs in the Fayette-Clinton district to a seat in the General Assembly of Ohio where he served with great distinction in those troublesome times in Ohio State affairs. He was then in his seventy-seventh year.
He is described as being of a stocky, heavy build, head very large, with blue eyes, a prominent nose, and pleasing countenance. He died January 13, 1860.
From History of Adams County, Ohio from its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time - by Nelson W. Evans and Emmons B. Stivers - West Union, Ohio - Published by E. B. Stivers - 1900