Robinson, L. A. (Lewis Archibald)

Lewis Archibald Robinson was born on February 15, 1866, in Cedar Grove, Virginia, to Andrew A. Robinson and Virginia Fries. He completed his preparatory training as an instructor at the Shenandoah Institute in Dayton, Virginia, in 1885.

Robinson received both an A.B. in 1898 and an A.M. in 1901 from the University of Illinois. His masters thesis was titled “The Teaching of Secondary Mathematics with Special Reference to the High Schools of Illinois”. While he was in graduate school he taught math in a local high school and worked as an assistant in mathematics in the Preparatory School at the University of Illinois. Robinson left Illinois after graduation to teach physics and math at the State Agricultural College in Pullman Washington.

The following year, Robinson was appointed to a teaching position in physical science at Oregon State Normal School in Monmouth. Before moving, he asked his childhood friend, Anna (Annie Mae Gard), to accompany him to Oregon. Under the pretense that he had found her a teaching position, Anna went to Salem. On the day she arrived (September 15, 1902), they were married.

On June 24, 1904 their first and only child, Hazel Gard, was born. Robinson was Professor of Physics and Mathematics at Oregon State Normal School in Monmouth from 1903 to 1908. During the 1907-1908 school year, the Oregon Legislature failed to appropriate funds to the school and the faculty worked through the end of the school year without salary. When school let out Robinson moved to New York to begin further training at Columbia University, leaving his wife and daughter in Monmouth to take care of the house. In 1911 Robinson published research titled “Experimental Investigation of Mental Fatigue in School Children” from the New York University, School of Pedagogy.

Text adopted from, “Normal School Department,” Oregon Teachers Monthly: a Journal Devoted to the Educational Interests of the Northwest 13, no.1, (1908).

From the guide to the L.A. Robinson Collection, 1892-1951, bulk 1904-1908, (Western Oregon University Archives)