E.O. Robinson’s Enduring Legacy
E.O. Robinson was a partner in the highly successful Cincinnati timber company of Mowbray & Robinson, that drew on the hardwood forests of Eastern Kentucky for its raw product. He was a native of Illinois, who had moved to the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky region as a young man. Mowbray & Robinson became one of the region’s most important industrial corporations with large land holdings in the Kentucky mountains and busy timber mills at Quicksand and West Irvine, Kentucky.
On his retirement from business in 1922, E.O. Robinson wished to return to the Kentucky mountains some of the personal fortune he had realized from the timber trade, and he wanted the Mountain Fund to improve life for the people of the mountains through education.
Initially, he worked with the University of Kentucky, donating 15,000 acres of forest land which subsequently became the Robinson Forest and has been used since by the University for training students and as an experimental station.
In 1929, Robinson formed a new trust and began Homeplace on Troublesome Creek near Ary in Perry County as an extension service and community center, under the direction of Lula Hale. By the time of Robinson’s death in 1934, he had donated nearly all of his considerable fortune to the Robinson Mountain Fund’s continuing work.
A self-perpetuating Board of Trustees under Chairman Edward O’Rear took over the role of directing the Fund’s activities after Robinson’s death. Under the subsequent Chairmen, Ross Sloniker, Dr. Francis Hutchins, Fred Bryant, Dr. Farra Van Meter, Dr. Lyman Ginger, Judge N. Mitchell Meade, Judge William Engle III, and Paul R. Thornsberry, the Fund has expanded its program of donations and contributions.
E.O. Robinson Mountain Fund Scholarships
For nearly seventy years, the Robinson Fund has carried out a program of scholarships that are administered through individual Kentucky colleges.
Designed to provide modest but crucial assistance to mountain students who would otherwise be unable to attend college, the Robinson Fund scholarships are awarded to students from 30 mountain counties who meet the Fund’s strict criteria. Awards are made annually, renewable on demonstration of progress toward graduation.
Since this program began, the Fund has assisted thousands of mountain scholars and awarded millions in total scholarship grants.
General Goals and Policies
The Mountain Fund assists general grant applicants only after thorough, often personal, inquiry and monitors the effect of grants closely.
Applicants who can demonstrate the clear and direct benefit of their activities in the mountains are most likely to receive Robinson Fund approval. The Fund does not make grants to individuals, and scholarships are awarded only through Kentucky colleges and universities.
In addition to scholarships, the Robinson Fund has made several million dollars in total grants to hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare agencies serving the mountain region. The Fund often works in cooperation with established public and private agencies in the mountains and helps to stimulate the growth and use of a community’s own resources.
The Mountain Fund has also aided Kentucky colleges with additional grants for buildings and program development.
Serving Kentucky’s Mountain Region
The E.O. Robinson Mountain Fund was chartered by its founder in 1922 as an instrument to improve general welfare and education in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky.
For more than seven decades, the E.O. Robinson Fund has been involved directly in elementary and college-level education, health care, and community development in the mountains.
The Fund’s major activities today center on providing college scholarships for mountain students attending Kentucky colleges and making grants for health care services and equipment throughout the Kentucky mountain region. The Fund also assists qualified community projects and mountain agencies and institutions.
In all of its activities, the Fund strives to remain faithful to the admonition of its founder, E.O. Robinson, who directed only that the Fund “be a good neighbor” to the mountains.
