Career
Along with others, he established the San Francisco-Sacramento-Placerville entertainment circuit of the day. As well as some of San Francisco"s first theaters. Great-grandfather Robinson served in Edward Braddock"s ill-fated army.
Their son, the artist Charles Dorman Robinson, was born in East Monmouth, Maine in 1847, and soon after, the family moved to Newport, Vermont.
Robinson left for California without his family in 1848. When the Dramatic Museum burned down, he built the 2,000 seat American Theater, considered to be one of the first real theaters in the city.
In 1851, a citizen"s committee gave Robinson $50,000 to build the Adelphi Theater. Robinson and a partner staged opera, minstrel, and burlesque productions, the first being a farce written by Robinson, Seeing the Elephant.
Robinson also did "Yankee" impersonations, gaining the nickname "Yankee" Robinson.
He was a stage personality who entertained along the old Barbary Coast, setting the tone for the first generation of California popular music In 1857, he left California, appeared in Mobile, Alabama, and then vanished.