Arranged in nine subseries; legal size and oversize material (one box):
Subseries A: Jane H. Robins 1814 - 1885
Subseries B: Charles E. Robins 1836 - 1893
Subseries C: Sarah E. Robins 1838 - 1866
Subseries D: Hannah M. Robins 1841 - 1890
Subseries E: Eunice (Una) Robins 1880 - 1886
Subseries F: Vernon Robins 1881 - 1933
Subseries G: Saxton Robins 1882 - 1901
Subseries H: Additional Family Members 1803 - 1876
Subseries I: Family Books

Subseries A-G are arranged chronologically. Correspondence with Elizabeth Robins is at the beginning of each subseries, followed by General Correspondence, Business Correspondence and/or personal items such as notebooks, essays, etc. Correspondence is arranged alphabetically; diaries and letterpress books by chronology. The extreme diversity of material in this series complicates uniform arrangement and description. [See the Series Three box and folder list for the complete contents of Series Three.]

Series Three is a remarkable collection of papers which enables one to study the close and intricate network of family relationships that formed Elizabeth Robins's earliest environment. One gets a sense of her place in the family through the many annotations in Robins's hand; and, more importantly, her perception of how that family molded the character of Elizabeth Robins, actress, novelist and woman of independent means. The quantity of family material which is preserved in Series Three serves as silent testimony to Robins's abiding interest in her heritage; indeed, in her later years, she kept in contact with the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of a paternal aunt. [See Series Two: General Correspondence, the letters of the Eliots and Masks.]

Series Three provides interesting case studies of the family, education (especially of women), religion, and business enterprise in the nineteenth century. The Robins family also served as models for plots and characters in Elizabeth Robins's novels, e.g. The Open Question (published in 1898), "Rocky Mountain Journal", and "Theodora, or The Pilgrimage". There is abundant information, covering a century and a half, on the history of an American family.

Elizabeth Robins was the great-granddaughter of Sarah and Asabel Hussey (d. 1851) who were the proprietors of Eutaw House, a Baltimore hotel. Since her father, Charles Ephraim Robins (CER), married his first cousin, Hannah Maria Crow, Robins descended in two lines from the Husseys of Baltimore. Her paternal grandmother, Jane Hussey Robins (JHR), appears to have been the dominant female influence on the young Elizabeth Robins; in Robins's words, her "touchstone." Jane Hussey Robins (1806 - 1885) carried on a voluminous correspondence with her granddaughter, taking an interest in her stage career and its attendant perils, e.g. the fear that James O'Neill or George Richmond Parks were paying Robins too much personal attention. JHR also wrote for thirty years to her son, Robins's father, Charles Ephraim Robins. CER wrote to Robins in 1882 : "...she [JHR] has been alive, (so different from many women) awake to and full of interest in, all the marvels and progress of this great age, all its great thoughts and great questions. Conservative by nature, religious by tradition, training, and habit, she has never for a moment departed from the views and influences that mounded her character in youth. A noble product of the best surroundings that were in the past."[2] Robins would later dedicate an edition of The Open Question to her.

Elizabeth Robins's paternal grandfather, Ephraim Robins (1784-1845), founded the Western Baptist Education Society in 1835. The state of Kentucky later chartered it as Western Baptist Theological Institute and the cornerstone was laid in 1840 at Covington. Subseries H contains two letters, dated 1824 and 1826, to Ephraim Robins from John C. Calhoun.

The papers of Charles Ephraim Robins (1832 - 1893), collected in Subseries B, make up the bulk of Series Three. CER was an entrepreneur, a scientist, and politico-religionist. He also wrote and lectured on social issues such as prohibition. CER's papers include extensive business correspondence which documents his ventures in real estate, insurance, banking, manufacturing, and assaying. In 1875, CER went to the territory of Colorado as an assayer for the Little Annie Gold Mining Company. His office was located at Summit in Rio Grande County, from which he also observed and reported on weather conditions for the United States Army. In 1880 Robins visited him at Summit, just as she would later visit her brothers on the gold fields of Alaska in 1900. CER wrote to his family about the West, religion, God, women's rights, landscapes, the family, and events of the day.

Subseries B also contains consistent runs of indexed letterpress books (outgoing) and letterbooks (incoming), in addition to 25 volumes of CER's personal diary.

Charles E. Robins and two of his sisters, Sarah Elizabeth and Jane Cornelia, were authors and thus were Elizabeth Robins's family precedents. [3] Robins felt great kinship with her aunt, Sarah Elizabeth Robins (1836 - 1869), a poet, and has noted on Sarah Robins's correspondence many similarities between their personalities. Sarah Robins appears to have been a role-model for Robins, particularly because of her interests in literature and education. [See the letters of Gorham D. Abbot.] Subseries C contains a letter from Charles Dickens and two letters from Edgar Allan Poe which Sarah Helen Whitman sent to Sarah Robins.

Hannah Crow Robins (1836 - 1901) spent much of her married life with her Crow relations in Louisville, Kentucky, particularly with the Bodines. [4] After the family moved back to Ohio from Staten Island, New York, some of her children were raised in Louisville; Elizabeth Robins usually stayed in Zanesville, Ohio, with her grandmother, Jane Hussey Robins. In 1885, Hannah Robins was committed to an asylum. In addition to correspondence, Subseries D contains Hannah Robins's diary for the year in which Elizabeth Robins was born.

The young siblings of Elizabeth Robins corresponded with her when she left home to pursue a stage career; these early letters tell of home, family, church and school. Her only sister, Eunice (Una), died before Robins went to England. Her brother, Saxton, went on to work for the Alaska Commercial Company in Anvik from about 1897 to his death in 1901. Subseries G contains his Clerk's Record Book which includes the minutes of several miners meetings. Robins brought her brother Vernon to England to study medicine, and he went on to open a practice in Louisville, Kentucky. Raymond Robins's letters can be found in Series Four: Raymond Robins and Margaret Dreier Robins.

Subseries H contains materials, including letters and notebooks, that belonged to Robins's Hussey, Crow and Robins relations. Notable are the various family genealogies compiled by family members, including Elizabeth Robins, and the family newspaper edited by Rebecca Robins.

Subseries I is made up of books which belonged to family members. Of particular interest is the volume of poetry by Sarah Elizabeth Robins, which was written under the pseudonym "Sidney Russet."

Footnotes
2. See letter dated January 26, 1882 in Subseries B. Box 6, folder 4.
3. Charles E. Robins's manuscripts can be found in Box 28, and include one entitled "With the Nuns," about the Romanization of America due to Catholic education.
4. Hannah Robins's brother-in-law, Dr. James Morrison Bodine, was dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Louisville and the favorite uncle of the Robins children. His letters appear in Series Two: General Correspondence.