The Ben L. Robinson Farm Journals consist of account journals for family farms and ranches operated by Ben L. Robinson and his father, Carl Robinson. The journals document a variety of household and farm expenses as well as the sales of cream, eggs, and other farm products and reflect the Robinson family's agricultural work at four properties in the vicinity of the towns of Cove and Imbler in northeast Oregon. In addition to raising dairy cattle and pigs, the Robinsons cultivated wheat, hay, grass seed, peas, oats, and other crops. One of the journals is an inventory listing the farm's livestock and their value.
The bulk of the journals were created by Ben L. Robinson; the journal for 1929-1933 was prepared by his father, Carl Robinson. There are no journals in the collection for the 10-year period (1933-1942) around Carl Robinson's death in 1936.
The
Ben L. Robinson Farm Journals, Oregon State University Special Collections & Archives Research Center, Corvallis, Oregon.
The journals were donated to the University Archives by Louise Dane, Ben L. Robinson's daughter, in 2011.
Collection is open for research.
Ben L. (Ben Lawrence) Robinson was a farmer in Union County, Oregon, from 1937 until his retirement in 1978, operating his parents' farm from 1937 until he bought a ranch near Imbler in 1943. Robinson served on various county and state-wide agricultural organizations, including two years as president of the Oregon Farm Bureau Federation. He was a member of the Oregon State Forestry Board in 1960-1968, the Oregon Water Development Corporation, and the Imbler School Board. Robinson was active in Union County planning activities during the 1950s-1970s. In 1988, Oregon State University presented him with a Diamond Pioneer Agricultural Career Achievement Award.
Robinson was born on December 1, 1906, in Spangle, Washington to Carl and Sophia Grunewald Robinson. His family moved to Montana when he was a boy and he graduated from high school in Wilsall, Montana in 1924. Robinson earned an undergraduate degree in animal husbandry from Montana State College in 1929 and a master's degree from South Dakota State College in 1933. He worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture until 1937, when he returned to Oregon to take over his parents' farm after his father's death. He retired to LaGrande in 1978 and moved to Corvallis in 1995.
Robinson died in Corvallis, Oregon, on February 23, 2000.