W. F. Robinson
W. F. Robinson, chief engineer of the gauging department of The Buckeye Pipe Line Company, has been located at Lima for the past 14 years, and has been identified with the oil industry since boyhood. He was born in 1860 in Brooklyn, New York, and is a son of James Robinson now deceased. James Robinson was also interested in oil production, having started in at old Oil Creek when the oil industry was in its infancy. When the various pipe lines were consolidated, in April, 1877, he was made chief engineer of the tank gauging department, a position he held until his death in 1898.
The Robinson family left Brooklyn in 1862 and located in the oil field of Pennsylvania, their first residence being at Petroleum Center. From there, in 1873, they moved to St. Petersburg, Clarion County, and six years later our subject was made his father's assistant in the business and stationed at Bradford, Pennsylvania. he remained there 12 years, when he was sent to take charge of the office at Lima, and upon the death of his father in 1898 he was promoted to the office of chief engineer. His territory embraces all the oil fields of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, Kansas and Indian Territory, with offices at Bradford, Pennsylvania, Lima and Independence, Kansas.
Mr. Robinson was married in 1884 to Mary E. Conneely, a native of Pennsylvania. They have tow daughters Genevieve and Frances, the former being a graduate and the latter a student of the Lima High School.