Daniel Minor Robertson

Daniel Minor "Mack" Robertson, son of George and Ann Samuel Robertson, "Mack" was educated in Edinburgh, Scotland. He resided for a time in Caroline County but later went west.

He was was a relative of Donald Robertson who operated a private school in King and Queen County on the Mattaponi River.

For years there has been an interest by many historians in the location of the school operated by Donald Robertson in Drysdale Parrish in upper King and Queen County, Virginia during the last half of the 18th Century. It was a prestigious school attended by children who would become prominent leaders during and after the American Revolution. The location was known to be near Newtown, Virginia and historical records report that the building was frame over a brick foundation. Popular local history indicated that portions of a school building remained standing in the early 20th Century. However, prior to May of 2011, no archaeological investigation had been undertaken.

We know much of Robertson’s life because of family letters and comments by President James Madison and by David Mays in his ’52 Pulitzer Prize biography of Edmund Pendleton, but mostly from Robertson’s journal. His small record book contains a powerful record of Robertson’s life at his school from 1758 to 1773. It can now be found at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond. The personal inscription is difficult to read but tells the historic 15-year account of his life at the school.

In 1752, when he was 35 years old, Donald Robertson, the younger of the two sons of Charles Robertson, a wealthy gentleman of good breeding and character, left Scotland for Virginia. He ventured to the colonies to seek his fortune, and to freely teach his beliefs in independent thought. He was a graduate of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Because of civil unrest in his country, which scattered the people to the four winds, he came to America to live. There was a demand for qualified teachers in the new world and Robertson quickly gained a notable reputation as a private tutor in the home of John Baylor of Caroline County and Walkerton, Virginia, in King and Queen County.

After five years of tutoring the Baylor children and their neighbors, Robertson was encouraged to open a school on his 150-acre farm in the upper part of King and Queen County. Many influential families that lived in the vicinity wanted their children to enjoy the advantages of a higher education. There were very few secondary teachers in colonial times and Robertson could see that there was a great need for a secondary school. If a planter had a child who was very studious and if he could afford it, he would send him back to England for an education. Other than home schooling, there were no other educational alternatives in the area until the Robertson School.

During the fifteen years from 1758 to 1773, this prestigious school had as many as thirty or forty pupils each year and provided a broad curriculum, in both English and Latin. The school greatly influenced the education of some 200 male and a few female children of the Virginia Colony. Studies included English grammar, composition, and literature, the classical histories of Greece, Rome and England, including authors such as Virgil, Cicero, Horace, and Ovid. French and Latin grammar lessons were offered as well as physics, theology, chemistry, and philosophy. Representative of the many books studied were Montaigne’s Essays, Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Addison’s The Spectator, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws, and Ruddiman’sRudiments of the Latin Tongue.

Robertson is known to have been one of the best school masters within the American British Colonies whose personal discipline and exacting manner set a great example for his numerous pupils, many of whom became leaders of the newly formed United States. Robert and Lawrence Brooke, respectively, became the Governor of Virginia in 1794 and a surgeon who served with John Paul Jones in the Continental Navy during the Revolution. John Penn, a lawyer from Caroline County, moved from Virginia to North Carolina, represented North Carolina in the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence. Harry Innes entered the Law Office of Edmund Pendleton, a well known political leader throughout the Revolution. His brother James Innes was captain of a militia unit before the Revolution, a colonel during that war, Attorney General of Virginia after the War, and later an eloquent lawyer with a brilliant career. A John Tyler, born in 1747, is believed to have been the John Tyler who was Governor of Virginia and the father of the nation's tenth president. George Rogers Clark explored the Northwest at President Thomas Jefferson's direction. There were seven Taylors, brothers and cousins, of whom John Taylor of Caroline, who succeeded Richard Henry Lee as a United States Senator, was the most distinquished. Donald Robertson's most well known pupil was James Madison, the fourth president of the United States and “Father of the Constitution”. It is believed that the influence of Donald Robertson on James Madison in his formative years was significantly responsible for his writing ability in the Federal Constitution and his work with Thomas Jefferson. Madison’s opinion of his early teacher is revealed in one of his notes written when he was in his early eighties near the close of his life, saying: “All that I have been in life I owe largely to that man.”

The extensive documentation in his personal account and letters does not reveal any record of Robertson’s service in the Virginia Militia. However, he was very supportive of the Revolutionary War and provided the army with corn and beef. On hearing about the signing of the peace treaty in 1781 between Great Britain and the colonies, Robertson is reported to have remarked that the "principles he taught and fought for so hard had finally seen fruition, and he could now rest at ease." In January, 1783, Robertson died peacefully in his sleep at home in King and Queen County the night after the postal courier had visited to tell him that the Revolutionary War had ended.

Sources

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