“[James Robinson] is a good deal of a public man, and does more business than most people,” Albert Flagler, one of Robinson’s neighbors, said in 1872.

During an oral history interview in 1982, Oswald Robinson, James Robinson’s great grandson, recalled that his great grandfather once operated a drover’s tavern on the Robinson farm. Situated as it was on the busy Warrenton Turnpike, Robinson’s tavern provided weary livestock drovers, stagecoach drivers, and farmers traveling to market with lodging and a hearty meal.

Some of the Robinson Papers discovered when the fire-damaged Robinson house was dismantled support Oswald Robinson’s recollections and indicate numerous occasions between 1850 and 1851 when James Robinson purchased items that may have been used to serve his tavern guests. 

Others sources of information about the drover’s tavern include a sketch map by Beverly Robinson, another great grandson of James Robinson. Lillian Robinson, James Robinson’s great granddaughter, remembers that the tavern, “was down on the Pike in front of [the] house.”

Using the Robinson family’s oral histories, archeologists attempted to locate the site of the drover’s tavern through a systematic metal detector survey. After mapping the locations of various 19th-century artifacts like hand wrought iron nails and horseshoes, the archeologists studied the artifacts’ placement and distribution to establish possible sites for the drover’s tavern.

Ultimately, two promising sites were discovered, and further excavation may conclude that one was the actual location of James Robinson’s drover’s tavern.