SIR BEVERLY ROBINSON.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1092, 3 May 1913, Page 4

SIR BEVERLY ROBINSON.

WORKS AS PAVING CONTRACTOR. There’s a modest little middleaged gentleman in a mo J s little old-fashioned office in rather obscure building -at M . 16 Exchange place, New ork, who has something that many a millionaire would give over at least one or two of his millions for. An invention ? No. A secret of perpetual youth ? A . te for baldness ? A remedy for d epsia or gout ? Simply a perfectly good, pro ’ly old and eminently desh:v.s title. Sir John Beverley Robinson, Baronet. He thinks so little of his rank that that he doesn’t bother about the title. Instead of lording it in England or Canada —which he might —he engages in the paving stone business in New York, and instead of inhabiting some ancient and gloomy castle, he lives in a comfortable modern cottage in the none-too-fashionable suburb of Edgewater, N.Y. Instead of styling himself Sir John, he insists upon being plain “Mister.” And to those in the paving stone line who know him he is even plain “ Robinson ” or “ Beverley.” . “ Mister Robinson’s rank, which he has succeeded in keeping very much to the background for a long time, came to light the other day when he arrived from England on the Minnehaha -returning from a short visit.

The British booking office learning exactly who he was on the other side, plastered his name on the passenger list in big, black type as“SirJ. Beverley Robinson, Bart., and the shipsnews reporters who met the vessel immediately began to ask him about the suffragettes, the old-age pension system, and other things Britannic. JUST ‘ ‘ MISTER, ” HE SAYS. For answer he gave them a long and hearty laugh. “ Why, I’ve lived in New York City since before most of you youngsters were born,” he said. “ And I don’t want to be ‘ Sir John,’ but plain ‘ Robinson.’ Come down to my office in Exchange Place some day and pay me a visit.”

A World reporter accepted the invitation and dropped in next afternoon. The baronet, who was conducting some correspondence, after the English fashion, in long hand, at once dropped business and became a host.

'* I wish you’d forgot about this affair of the title, \ he laughed. I almost forget it myself at times. Of course I’m a British subject, and I am proud of my ancestry and all that. But a title doesn’t amount to anything here. A man in America is what he makes himself—and anywhere else in the world, for that matter. “ I’ve been here for more than

thirty years, and I suppose I will spend the rest of my life right about New York. And I can get along very comfortably just as ‘ Robinson ’or ‘ Beverly.’ Please don’t write anything about me.” It took a lot of pressing to get the baronet to tell about his family —the records of which are duly spread forth over a full page of the “ Who’s Who ” of British nobility: “Burke’s Peerage, Baronetage, and Knightage.’’.

His earliest American ancestor was Christopher Robinson, who was sent there in the middle of the seventeenth century as the first Colonial Secretary of Virginia, and married Catherine Beverly. His son Christopher 11., was an officer of the Queen’s Rangers during the Revolution, and after the defeat of the British forces was given a grant of land in the Canadian wilds, which has since become Toronto.

The third in the line was the first to hold the title. This was the first John Beverly Robinson, father of the present baronet. He was a barrister and AttorneyGeneral of upper Canada. He was created a baronet in 1854, and died in 1863. His eldest son, James Lukin Robinson, succeeded to the title. He, likewise, was a barrister. Upon his death, in August, 1894, the baronetage passed to a cousin, Sir Frederick Arnold Robinson,, who died in Toronto in 1901. CONCEALED THE BARONETCY. Thereupon the rank fell upon the present Sir John, who is the fourth baronet. In 1901 he had been in New York about two score years, and was, in all outward appearances, a thoroughgoing American. He simply accepted the baronetage because there wasn’t anything else he could do, and made no fuss about it. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even let news of it get into the papers. There is another John Beverly Robinson, his son, who is eighteen years old, and going to college, and be will be the fifth baronet, but, his father says, he won’t make any fuss over the title, either. The Robinsons have never gone in for society, outside that of a small circle of friends, and fellow church members in the little Jersey town. “I’d really much rather talk about paving blocks,’’ said Sir John to the World man, as he displayed a sample of the material he deals in. “This is a block made of blast furnace slag in the north of England.’’ It is shapelier and more durable than granite, he says, and has been used to pave several avenues in Washington. The Long Island approach to the Queensborough Bridge is also paved with the blocks. Sir John has made a bid for several large contracts to pave streets in Manila for the Government.

Despite his long residence here, be has kept closely in touch with affairs in England through his many visits, and when there, of course, is hailed by his title and receives the precedence due to his rank.

But so modest has he been about being a baronet while in America that scarcely any of his business friends and only a few of the residents of Edgewater ever heard of Sir John Beverly Robinson.