Robinson Mountain

BySteve

Private Robinson and Island Falls: The Man Behind the Mountain’s Name

The Maine Legislature and the Civil War Centennial Commission renamed the mountain to honor Private George Foster Robinson (August 13, 1832 – August 16, 1907), a local Civil War hero from the 8th Maine Volunteer Infantry who saved Secretary of State William H. Seward from an assassination attempt in 1865. Because that act was not directly against an enemy in battle, Congress honored Robinson with the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

George Foster Robinson

From Northern Maine to the 8th Maine Infantry

Robinson was born in Hartford, Maine, in 1832, but by the time the Civil War broke out he had settled in the small Aroostook County community of Island Falls. He enlisted in Company B of the 8th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment in August 1863, joining a unit that saw hard fighting in Virginia. On May 20, 1864, Robinson was wounded at the Battle of Ware Bottom Church, one of the engagements of the Bermuda Hundred Campaign. His injuries left him unfit for further combat duty, so the Army reassigned him to convalescent nursing work in Washington, D.C., while he continued to recover.

The Night That Made Him Famous

By the spring of 1865, Robinson had been detailed as a private nurse to Secretary of State William H. Seward, who was recovering from a serious carriage accident that had broken his arm and jaw. On the night of April 14, 1865, the same night John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre, Lewis Powell forced his way into Seward’s Washington home under the pretense of delivering medicine. Powell savagely attacked Seward with a knife, and Robinson, still recovering from his own wartime wounds, intervened. Though stabbed several times himself, Robinson wrestled with Powell and helped drive him from the house, almost certainly saving Seward’s life. Had Powell succeeded, the assassination plot against Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Seward together would have dealt an even more devastating blow to a nation just emerging from civil war.

Because Robinson’s heroism occurred off the battlefield, in a civilian setting rather than combat against an armed enemy, Congress could not honor him with a standard military decoration. Instead, following an appeal from the Maine legislature, Congress awarded him the Congressional Gold Medal in 1871, along with a $5,000 cash award — recognition reserved for extraordinary acts of civic heroism.

Life After the War

Robinson’s later career took him far from Maine. He worked as a Treasury Department clerk, then in the Quartermaster General’s Office of the War Department, before returning to the Army in 1879 as a paymaster with the rank of major. He served at posts across Texas and New Mexico before retiring in 1896 and settling in Pomona, California, where he died of pneumonia in 1907. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Honoring Robinson in Island Falls

Despite his fame in 1865, Robinson faded into relative obscurity for much of the 20th century. Even reference sources sometimes got his birthplace and death date wrong. That began to change in 1965, the centennial of the Lincoln and Seward assassination attempts. That year, Congress named a 10,415-foot peak in Alaska “Mount Sergeant Robinson,” fitting given that Seward himself later negotiated the Alaska Purchase. That same year, the Maine Civil War Centennial Commission renamed May Mountain, near Island Falls, as “Robinson Mountain,” a lasting local tribute to the town’s Civil War hero.

The connection endures today. In October 2019, the town of Island Falls celebrated the reopening of the Robinson Mountain Hiking Trail after a summer of volunteer trail work, including help from the Island Falls Free Wheelers ATV Club. The 4.5-mile trail, rated intermediate in difficulty, offers hikers sweeping views of Mount Katahdin and the Upper Mattawamkeag Lake. Local historian and former town librarian Becky Drew has helped keep Robinson’s story alive for residents and visitors, ensuring that the private who once saved a cabinet secretary’s life is remembered on the landscape of the small Maine town he called home.

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