James Robb was born at Brownsville, Fayette County, Pennsylvania. His mother was a Meetkerk. His father was drowned in the Monongahela River when James was about five years old, and at the age of thirteen, the boy left home and walked twenty-two miles through snow at Morgantown, Virginia (now in West Virginia), to seek his fortune.
Employed in a bank at Morgantown, he became its cashier at the age of twenty-one, with a salary of $800 per year. He removed to New Orleans three years later, and was a resident of that city for more than two decades, becoming active in the establishment of banking and commercial houses or agencies in New Orleans, St. Louis, Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, and Liverpool.
In New Orleans he set up a private bank, the Bank of James Robb. According to an autobiographical statement (post), he made six visits to Europe and fifteen to Cuba.
In 1842 he became president of the New Orleans Gas Light & Banking Company, and two years later he headed a newly established gas light company of Havana, Cuba, with the capital, as he observed, divided equally between himself and the queen mother of Spain.
He sold out this Havana interest in 1854, however, and thereafter was chiefly interested in railroads.
He was very much interested in projecting rail connections from New Orleans northward, and in 1852 became president of the New Orleans, Jackson & Great Northern Railroad.
In 1859 he changed his residence to Chicago, becoming receiver for the St. Louis, Alton & Chicago Railway Company and, upon its reorganization in 1862 as the Chicago & Alton, its president until 1864. He removed to New York in that year, was for a short time head of the Atlantic & Great Western Railroad, and a little later, president for about a year of the Dubuque & Sioux Railway Company.
In the autumn of 1865 he returned to New Orleans to establish the Louisiana National Bank, which started operation with capital of $1, 000, 000. He withdrew from the presidency of this bank in 1869 and retired from business two years later, with a fortune diminished but ample for his wants.
In 1873 he removed to "Hampden Place, " at Cheviot, Ohio (now part of Cincinnati), which he had purchased for his mother in 1844, and there spent the remaining years of his life, taking an interest in the industrial expositions of Cincinnati.
He owned a fine house on Washington Avenue and was an art collector of prominence, owning canvases by Rubens, David, Salvator Rosa, and others. Sixty-seven of his pictures were offered for sale in 1859 but part of his collection was retained to be handed down in the family.
During the period of his residence in New Orleans he was a member for one session of the state Senate and also saw service as a member of the city council.
His marriage, which occurred in New Orleans, proved in later years an unhappy one, and he lived alone for years before his death.
