Robinson, Leonidas Dunlap

22 Apr. 1867–7 Nov. 1941

Leonidas Dunlap Robinson, attorney and congressman, was born on the family plantation in Gulledge township, Anson County, the son of John and Araminta Robinson of English ancestry. Educated in the common schools of the county, at Anson Institute in Wadesboro, and at Carolina College in Ansonville, he studied law under Colonel Risden Tyler Bennett. A delegate to every Democratic state convention in North Carolina from 1888 to 1941, he was admitted to the bar in 1889, appointed solicitor of the Thirteenth Judicial District in 1901 by Governor Charles B. Aycock, and elected thereafter until he retired in 1910. Robinson was mayor of Wadesboro from 1890 to 1893 and served in the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1895 and 1901. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention of 1912, 1920, and 1924. Robinson owned and operated extensive farming interests and was one of the organizers of the North Carolina Cotton Growers Association. A Democrat, he was elected to Congress in 1916 and served until 1921. In 1909 Robinson became president of the Bank of Wadesboro, a post he filled for thirty years. Although baptized in the Methodist faith, he is said never to have formally "joined" a church even though he contributed to the First Methodist Church in Wadesboro and to Bethel Methodist Church in the southern part of Anson County near his birthplace.

Robinson married Nettie George Dunlap on 7 Apr. 1897, and they were the parents of two sons, E. Carl and L. D., Jr. After her death in 1931, he married Mrs. Emma Hunter Craven of Warrenton. He was buried in the family plot of East View Cemetery, Wadesboro.