Reuben Buck Robertson (1879-1972)

By Reuben Buck Robertson, III

from “Our Robertsons”

Copyright© 2023 Victoria Robertson

Reuben Buck Robertson Sr. was born on June 11, 1879, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and given the name of his maternal grandfather, Reuben Buck. He was the son of Cynthia Buck and Charles Dumbreck Robertson.

Reuben attended Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati, where he starred on the football and track teams. In the fall of 1896, he entered Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut, the first member of his family to attend college. At Yale, he continued his interest in sports. Injuries kept him off the football field, but Reuben again starred at track, in which he specialized in the shot put and hammer throw. In those days, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton were regarded as the “Big Three” of college athletics in America and usually dominated the intercollegiate meets.

Reuben graduated from Yale College in the Class of 1900. Intending to follow his father’s profession, he attended the Cincinnati Law School while working as a law clerk for his father. He received his law degree in 1903 and practiced as a young attorney in his father’s law office from 1903 to 1906. Years later, he recalled those times in Cincinnati when he was a law student and a young attorney starting out in his father’s law office, and the city was largely controlled by the corrupt political machine of “Boss” George B. Cox:

After graduating from Yale, I studied law at the Cincinnati Law School. The Law School was then located in the old Mercantile Library building on the East side of Walnut Street, between Fourth and Fifth Streets.

On the opposite side of the street was a very ornate Beer Saloon, owned and operated by George B. Cox. We law students frequented it at lunch because, after careful “Research,” we found that George B. served the biggest free lunch in town, if you purchased a stein of beer or a bowl of soup. The beautiful oil painting over the bar portrayed a lady of charming form, but quite devoid of garments. So far as I know, a room back of this bar was where the “gang” congregated, on call of George B. when important matters of business had to be discussed, and it was from this office that the Generalissimo issued his directives.

I think you should understand clearly that George B. was a thoroughly honest political leader who never stole a penny from the city’s till. However, he was admittedly a man of shrewdness and power and many people sought his advice. If a contractor wanted to secure a contract for paving a street, for building a City building, for selling supplies to the City, the advice of George B. always proved to be most helpful; and of course, for such advice, he was entitled to a suitable fee.

Ambitious individuals who sought political preferment knew who to see to get the election machinery into smooth operating order and of course machinery to run smoothly must be greased. The saloon business must have been profitable, for George lived in a $300,000 mansion in the Mt. Auburn section and died a millionaire. Of course gambling joints, houses of prostitution and the like found it wise to see George if they were to avoid police interference. The gang followed the practice honored by Tammany Hall and the political organizations of such cities as Chicago, with tightly organized and firmly disciplined captains in charge of every precinct, with favors and coercion as their tools.

At that time, traffic on the Ohio river was active, and many roustabouts and steam boat employees occupied boarding houses and flop houses (at 25 cents a night) on Water Street, facing the boat landing. These workmen were, like most river men, “comers and goers” and formed a fine reservoir of purchasable votes, when votes were needed by the gang. This was looked upon as a most important area and for its control, one of George B’s most trusted and most politically wise lieutenants, Mike Mullen, was put in charge.

Mike believed that attainment of the objective was the thing, and the method of arriving at the objective was of no importance. The goon squad was called upon as needed to prevent a recalcitrant voter from reaching the polling place.

While I was in law school some restlessness began to develop regarding the autocracy maintained by George B., and an effort to check his power was organized. It was thought that some restraints might be accomplished if “watchers” were provided at each polling place, from among the younger voters who were not involved with the gang. Harry Hunt and I had volunteered to help and were assigned to Mike Mullen’s water front, but we were just `babes in the woods’ when we entered Mike Mullen’s domain, and I’m sure that vote purchasing at $1.00 per head went merrily on just as though we hadn’t been there, and George B.’s candidate won almost a unanimous approval.

Between classes at the Law School, I spent as much time as possible getting indoctrinated in the ways of a law office. My father, after completing his term as Judge of the Common Pleas Court, joined forces with Morris L. Buchwalter (who had also completed his term as Judge), to form the partnership Robertson and Buchwalter. Judge Buchwalter’s son Robert, Yale ‘99, and I were the office neophytes, hoping ultimately to be accepted as full scale members of the firm. The Buchwalters were Republicans, the Robertsons Democrats, so Robert and I heard both sides of the political arguments. The Buchwalters looked the other way when the short-comings of Cox and his associates were mentioned.

On June 7, 1905, Reuben married twenty-one-year-old Hope Lindenberger Thomson. Hope was born on September 8, 1883, in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was the daughter of Laura Gamble and Peter Gibson Thomson, a prominent publisher and the founder of a major pulp and paper enterprise now known as the Champion International Corporation.

Following a nationwide financial panic and economic depression in 1905 – 1906, Reuben’s father-in-law, Peter G. Thomson, encountered severe difficulties in his business ventures. To make matters worse, he was taken ill and ordered to bed by the doctor. Because Peter G.’s sons had other problems to cope with, and had no knowledge of the kinds of problems being encountered in the newly established Champion Fibre Company in Canton in the rugged mountain country of western North Carolina, the Thomsons asked Reuben Robertson to go down for thirty days and report on the conditions there.

Reuben agreed to the temporary assignment, arriving in Canton with his young bride and baby daughter in September of 1906. Little did they realize they would stay there for the rest of their lives. The first thirty days was extended to sixty, and soon, Reuben was put in charge of the entire logging and timber operations for the new company.

The situation was chaotic. As Reuben later wrote, “The executives at Canton had found many areas of disagreement and very few occasions for cooperation. Discords, frictions and jealousies were rampant.” The problems among competing managers in the Canton operation became so acute that in November 1907, Peter G. Thomson granted the young lawyer complete control over the entire operation in a letter, stating: “Mr. Reuben B. Robertson is hereby given full authority to take entire charge of details of every kind at the plant of the Champion Fibre Co., to employ and discharge hands, and his decisions are to be absolute in all matters.”

This mandate was sometimes referred to as Reuben Robertson’s “Letter of Marque” because of the extremely broad powers it conferred upon him. He later recalled:

“[it] gave me a degree of organizational respectability and was never directly challenged. Obviously I was inexperienced in the problems of pulp and paper extract manufacturing; I was there because Champion’s ox was in the ditch. One of the first moves made to establish a “cease fire” among the warring executives was to bring them all together for a daily luncheon meeting. These meetings proved to be most effective, not only in maintaining diplomatic relationships between the individuals but also in educating the undersigned in the techniques of mill operation. For the most part only “problems” were discussed, so the writer gained his familiarity with the company activities more from what was going wrong than from what was going right.

When Hope and Reuben Robertson and six-month old daughter first arrived in western North Carolina, their home was a small slab cottage in the remote logging town of Sunburst, near the rugged Richland Balsam mountains, a dozen miles south of the pulp and paper mill which was being built in Canton. This beautiful area is now traversed by the Blue Ridge Parkway, which runs along the high ridges a few miles south of the old Sunburst logging village, but in those days it was still almost wilderness. There were no paved roads, and the dirt roads that did exist were rough and often impassible. A narrow-gauge logging train called “The Pea Vine” ran along the Pigeon River between Sunburst and the Canton mill.

It was a huge change for Hope, a young woman who had grown up in a well-to-do family in a large, sophisticated city, but she was tough and resourceful. In later years, she recalled it as a great learning experience and a happy time for her. She said she was never lonely or homesick, as she had no time to think about such matters. Like other women in the town, her days were spent caring for her baby, washing, ironing, cooking, and making clothes.

Around 1908, with a growing family, they moved to the West Asheville area of Buncombe County. In the 1940s, Reuben and Hope acquired a large, splendid country estate in Flat Rock, near Hendersonville, North Carolina, and after that they lived in a stone mansion on top of Town Mountain in Asheville. They also kept a home near the Atlantic shore in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

In 1912, Reuben Robertson was made general manager of the Canton mill. In 1916, he became vice president, and in 1925 he was made president and general manager. Reuben succeeded his late brother-in-law, Logan C. Thomson, as president of the combined Champion Paper and Fibre Company, Inc. on August 17, 1946.²³¹ He held that position until 1950, when he was appointed chairman of the Board of Directors, and his son, Reuben B. Robertson Jr., became president of the company. After his retirement in 1960, he was given the titles of Director Emeritus and Honorary Chairman of the Board.

After the pulp mill was constructed at Canton, the logging operations at Sunburst were phased out, and at Reuben’s urging, a large dam was constructed to create a reservoir that could supply water for the mill in times of drought. The result was that about a mile of the upper Pigeon River valley, the rail line, and the small Sunburst station were flooded. A deep, clear, new lake was formed, called Lake Logan in honor of Hope’s brother Logan Thomson, and looked very much like one of the lochs of Highland Scotland. Reuben Robertson Sr. rebuilt one of the old cabins of Sunburst into a mountain lodge, which he called “Sit-N- Whittle,” for a family retreat, and his children and other relatives built cabins for themselves. In its rugged, isolated mountain setting, Lake Logan became one of the most beautiful spots in America. The families spent many happy summers at Lake Logan, and numerous world leaders were entertained there by Reuben and his sons over the years.

Reuben B. Robertson Sr. was honored as “Man of the South” in 1950, based on a consensus of regional business leaders. He received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from North Carolina State University in 1932, (and the Reuben B. Robertson Forestry Lab at that institution was later named in his honor), an honorary Doctor of Laws from Western Carolina College in 1956, the Human Relations Award given by the Society for the Advancement of Management in 1957, and the 1954 Conservation Award of the American Forestry Association, among many other honors. He received such accolades with characteristic modesty and humor.

Throughout his long life, Reuben Buck Robertson had an abiding passion for family history. He published a book called Leaves of a Family Tree that explored some of the roots of our Robertsons, as well as those of the Buck family, and he published a separate book on the Scottish Thomson family of his wife Hope. Reuben and Hope, together with their teenage son Logan, visited Shetland in the summer of 1935, a homecoming adventure that he often mentioned in later years. Hope recorded her impressions and observations in an article in The Log, a Champion company magazine that was distributed to mill workers, executives, and friends of the company. Her article introduced the trip as follows:

A lifelong dream of my husband’s came true last summer, when he, Logan and I went to the Shetland Islands and saw the home in which his father was born. We took the S.S. St. Sunniva at Aberdeen, Scotland, for the 150 mile boat trip over waters that are frequently very rough, but, fortunately for us, were quite calm this time. The only reservation we could get was one small cabin for the three, so small that when we walked in together we could not turn around so had to back out; the distance between the berths was just as wide as Mr. Robertson’s shoulders. But after seeing the islands, the difficulties of getting there dwindled into insignificance.

We know that Reuben and Hope visited Walls and other places of interest on their trip to Shetland in 1935. They met at least one member of our Robertsons in Shetland, Margaret Robertson Williamson of Riskaness, with whom Reuben continued to correspond for some time.

Reuben Buck Robertson died at the age of ninety-three on December 26, 1972, in Asheville, Buncombe County, North Carolina, having lived most of his life in the Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina. A great and much beloved man in the eyes and hearts of the people of North Carolina, “Mr. Reuben” was a giant in the fields of forestry and papermaking.

Reuben’s wife, Hope Thomson Robertson, had passed away some fourteen years earlier, on September 19, 1958, also in Asheville. She was seventy-five.