The roots of Owen Robinson may well be found in the pages of this will from the late 1700s. Wealthy plantation owner Thomas Barton Gorsuch carefully laid out the details of his plantation and those of his enslaved people, stipulating what his wife should get, his children, and even his grandson, Robert. To his wife Jane, he gave “my negroes called Jacob, Dinah, and George.” To his son Lovelace, “my negroe man called Jack now in his own possession and also from and immediately after the decease of my said wife Jane, I give and bequeath the aforesaid Dinah and her increase unto my son Lovelace Gorsuch all to him, his heirs and assigns forever.” To his daughter Elizabeth, he gave “a negroe woman called Hannah and her increase.” He gave a woman named Kate, a man named Roger, and a man named Jacob to his son Thomas. An old woman named Hannah, the mother of previously mentioned enslaved people, was to go to his son John, as were Charles, George, and Moll and her children. To his grandson Robert he gave a woman named Luck and all her increase.

(Please note that, as a man, Thomas could designate what his wife was to get and then designate where that property was to go next after his wife passed—Jane could not determine for herself where that property was going if Thomas had already dictated it.)

Among all these named enslaved people are almost certainly the parents of Owen Robinson. He was born some time between 1790 and 1810 and was the property of Richard Gorsuch, brother of Robert, son of John, and grandson of Thomas Barton Gorsuch. The Gorsuch house, which passed to Thomas’s son John, was a landmark in Baltimore County and was used by British General Robert Ross for breakfast during the Battle of North Point.

Published articles later in Owen’s life said he was manumitted at the death of Richard in 1817 . . . except Richard didn’t die in 1817 but in 1834. Likewise, some sources say that Owen was 12 when he was manumitted, though he later reported that he was born in 1790.

While the details are spare and fuzzy, they are more than many former enslaved people were able to report. This is partly because the Gorsuch family was so prominent Maryland. While connections between the formerly enslaved and their owners were rarely reported after the war, such was not the case with Owen. Fully eighty years after his manumission he was still being connected in print to the Gorsuches.

At some point, Owen left Maryland and moved to Gettysburg. We have no record of why, but Maryland’s banning of education for black people and the enslaved almost certainly had something to do with it as did the difficulty of finding employment. Whatever the case, Owen got to work. One obituary said that he was a servant in many of the homes of Gettysburg residents, which was probably true.

But it was food that would be Owen’s business through most of his life. In 1860, the Census noted that he was a confectioner—a person who makes candy. The 1870 Census reported that he was a restaurant keeper, a business he would stay in for the remainder of his life.

He married a woman named Mary, and together they had seven children. Starting in the 1860s, Owen began advertising his own business—an oyster saloon.

In later years, he added to ice cream to the menu and advertised both in the newspapers. At the turn of the century, he was known as perhaps the oldest resident in Gettysburg, and he claimed in 1900 to have turned 110, though most believe he was closer to 95. The local paper did a story on his milestone and noted that he was both a great hunter and walker.

Owen would live only another seven months before passing. He was lauded in all the local newspapers with lengthy obituaries and anecdotes of his hunting.