Hannah Robinson

It is strongly believed that Hannah (annah) Had 11 grand children and I was the oldest girl.  After my mother died we searched for and found enough evidence to highly suspect that she was our grandmother.  We were convicted enough that we felt compelled to visit this lady in the nursing home and try to get the question answered:  Was she really our grandmother?  She didn't answer our question directly but she told us tales about this daughter that had these ten children that she had to baby sit for.  She never had any children after she left North Carolina so, she had to be talking about my mother because one of my sibblings was stillborn.  The ten living children were the ones that she imagined baby sitting.  The last time we visited with her, I took my youngest daughter and my sister took her daughter and we introduced them as her great grand children and she said "Hello great grand children".  She smiled and then drifted into a place where we couldn't reach her.  We could see that we were causing her a great deal of stress so we decided not to trouble her with our visits anymore.

It troubles me to this day that we did not have the pleasure of growing up with this lovely lady who reminded me so very much of  my mother through looks and mannerisms:  the way she held her purse in her lap as she rocked in her chair and the way she smiled when she looked at you as if she was about to tell you the secret that only she knew.

Hannah (Annah) Robinson R.I.P.)  -  JM

Hannah Robinson was likely born Annah Dockery in Black Jack Township, Richmond County, NC in 1903 to Henry and Betsey Dockery.

In 1917, she gave birth to a daughter, B.Y. Her daughter was raised by the child's father and his wife, Annah's older sister as their own. Annah moved to New York, shortly after her child was born. It is unlikely that B.Y. knew the identity of her birth mother. She recalled that after her mother's death, an aunt from NY came to NC and wanted to take her north.

B. Y.'s death in 1978 seems to have triggered a nervous breakdown from which Annah did not fully recover. Her life between 1917 and her death in 1994 is largely unknown to her descendants.  

Hannah was visited by a few of her descendants in the early 1990s. She was unable to share the details of her life but we left certain that she was indeed BJ's mother and my great-grandmother.