Family History of Jordan Robinson
By his Father Jim Robinson
November, 2007
Jordan Robinson, married to Megan Kathleen McCrossin, is the son of James Kenneth and Cheryl Kay (Hagen) Robinson. Megan Kathleen McCrossin is the daughter of Kathleen (Burns) McCrossin from Columbus, Ohio. The following is a brief narrative family history for Jordan beginning with his paternal and maternal grandparents.
Paternal Grandparents
Kenneth Samuel Robinson was born August 13, 1908, near Granada, Martin County, Minnesota. He was the third son in a family which would eventually have four sons and two daughters. At the age of 7, he moved with his family to a 120-acre farm about four miles from Rush City, Chisago County, Minnesota. He walked to school in Rush City and graduated in 1928 as valedictorian of his class. In 1929, he and his father John opened a hardware business in Rush City. His brother Adrian, who operated a grocery next to the hardware, joined Ken in the hardware after their father retired in 1936. It was known as John Robinson and Sons. The business flourished and, in the 1950’s, became affiliated with the Hardware Hank logo and was known as Robinson, Inc.
Mabel Lou Johnson was born February 25, 1906, on a farm near Harris, Chisago County, Minnesota. She was the granddaughter of Swedish-born Kristina Svenssdotter who emigrated to the U.S. with her husband and two small children in 1881. Mabel could not speak English until she attended nearby Willow Grove, a one-room rural school. She was the oldest of six living children. Mabel did well in school; she boarded in Rush City while attending high school there and graduated in 1923. She attended Normal School and, just a few months later, returned to her childhood country school, becoming a teacher to her younger siblings and cousins. She taught for seven years, two each at Willow Grove near her home, Brickyard School near Rush City and three years in Stacy, Minnesota.
While teaching at the Brickyard School, she met Kenneth. They met at a house party. They were married on August 4, 1932 at a small ceremony held at a minister’s parsonage. Their honeymoon was a camping trip, mostly on gravel roads. They drove to Yellowstone, the Tetons, Salt Lake City and returned via Kansas and Iowa. Dad kept track of mileage and expenses: 4,223 miles, total cost $74.23. In 1934, Ken and Mabel bought a house in Rush City at 845 West Second Street for $1,650, $25 down, $15 a month payment, no interest. This was the home where they raised their three sons: Clair John (Feb. 7, 1935), Noel David (Dec. 24, 1936) and James Kenneth (Dec. 8, 1941).
Mabel died on April 28, 1998. Kenneth died on April 11, 2001.
Maternal Grandparents
Wallace Hagen was born on February 6, 1918, the first son of a family which would consist of four boys and four girls. His heritage is Norwegian and German; his father Severt was one of four brothers who emigrated together from Norway to west central Minnesota in about 1900. Wally did well in school but completed only the eighth grade. As the oldest son, he was needed at home. A very hard worker, he once spent an entire winter hauling frozen gravel to repay his father’s government loans. After his marriage to Malinda, he took out a loan at the bank and bought a used tractor and plow. He moved his bride into an old bunkhouse that needed lots of fixing up. He continued to rent land and save for buying his own land. In 1959, Wally and Malinda bought 320 acres of land near Johnson, MN. In 1972, he bought an adjoining half section. By the time he retired from farming in 1982, he owned 640 acres and farmed an additional 1200 acres. All that land was worked by Wally and one hired man.
Malinda Carlson was born on March 29, 1913 on a farm south of Chokio, Stevens County, Minnesota. Her parents were of Norwegian and Swedish heritage. She had three brothers and one sister. Early in life, Malinda was diagnosed with osteogenesis imperfecta, brittle bone disease. An active, headstrong child, she didn’t respond well to her mother’s admonitions about her condition. She had many fractures; for example, in childhood she broke her left leg seven times between the ankle and knee. Malinda attended country school for eight years and completed high school in Chokio. She wanted to go on to nursing school, but her parents wanted her to stay home with them, possibly because of her illness, possibly because she was a hard worker and a great help with household duties and cooking.
Wally was five years younger than Malinda. So, it was some time before Wally’s and her circle of friends overlapped in this small, rural community. Wally was working as a hired hand for local farmers as well as with his father at home. He hired out to pick corn by hand. He was paid by the bushel; his record was 64 bushel picked in one day. He played baseball for the Chokio team; he had very large hands and swung a powerful bat. Wally and Malinda were married on November 27, 1942, at a rural Baptist parsonage not too far from Chokio. They did not take a honeymoon trip; wartime gas rationing prevented that.
Cheryl Kay was born on August 2, 1944. She would be their only child; a second pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.
Malinda died on May 13, 2000, and Wally died on March 25, 2001.
Jordan’s Father
James Kenneth, known as Jamie, grew up in a small neighborhood of several other families with small children. He attended school in Rush City, K-12, graduating in 1959. He followed his brothers to the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Jim, as he preferred to be called in college, developed an interest in German and decided to enter the School of Education. During what would have been his senior year, he left school in April, sailed across the Atlantic, and spent the next six months traveling and working in Europe. From June until early September, he worked at an auto parts factory in Frankfurt where he became fluent in German. He returned to the University, graduated in spring of 1964. He worked as a teacher in a Minneapolis junior high school for two years. The next two years were spent at the University of Colorado in Boulder getting a master’s degree. After meeting Cheryl, he returned to Minnesota to marry her and taught for the next six years at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. In 1974, he left the college and began a real estate appraisal career. He bought an existing appraisal business in 1981 and sold it again in 2002. It continues to operate as Robinson Appraisal; Jim will serve the new owners in an advisory role until 2012.
Jordan’s Mother
Cheryl attended elementary school in a one room school in Johnson, Big Stone County, Minnesota. After sixth grade, she was bused to the high school in Graceville, where she graduated in 1962, valedictorian of her class. She moved with her parents to a 320-acre farm near Johnson in 1959. After years of renting land, her father had saved enough money to buy his own land. As she was nearing graduation, her father took her by a healthy looking field of soybeans. He said there’s a semester of college for you in that field. One day later, a hailstorm turned the field black. Farming was a risky business. Cheryl did very well in college; she graduated in 1966 with a double major in English and Psychology. She took a junior-high teaching job in Austin, Minnesota. Although teaching English, she still had a strong interest in psychology. So, in the summer of 1967, she took some summer session classes in that subject at the University of Colorado, Boulder. There, at a square dance on the patio of the student union, she met Jim.
Cheryl and Jim traveled back and forth between Boulder and Austin/Chokio several times during the next school year. By the spring of 1968, they decided to get married and live in Minnesota. Jim took an associate professorship at a college in St. Peter and Cheryl a junior-high English teaching position in nearby LeSueur. In 1971, they bought a house in St.Peter at 1008 South Fifth Street. Bradon (“Brady”) Wallace was born on November 16, 1972, and Jordan James on October 31, 1976.
Jordan’s brother Brady
Brady graduated from high school in 1991 and graduated from Macalaster College in 1995. He began working as a contract instructor at North Carolina Outward Bound School in Asheville, NC. When not instructing, he went on many mountain climbing expeditions. Initially, he and his climbing buddies limited their expeditions to the United States. Eventually, however, Brady climbed mountains in Chile, Mexico, Peru, Thailand, Nepal and Pakistan. He now lives with his wife, Lucia, and young daughter, Tessa, born June 6, 2006, in Boulder, CO. He is the CEO for the Access Fund, a non-profit advocacy group for climbers throughout the United States.
Jordan
Jordan James was born in the hospital in Mankato, about 10 miles from St. Peter. Cheryl was working parttime at LeSueur. Fortunately, an elderly woman, Ethel Weldon, was able to come to our home and stay with the children until either Cheryl or Jim were able to get home. That remained the childcare pattern until Jordan started grade school. When Jordan was 2 1/2, Jim and Cheryl built a home on 8 wooded acres two miles from St. Peter. Jordan and Brady continued to attend school in St. Peter and went to a former neighbor’s house until mom or dad could get home after work.
Despite being diagnosed with a learning disability while in grade school, he perservered in elementary school and did very well in high school. He was active in Ecology Club, played trumpet in the band, competed in speech meets and was a sprinter in track—competing at the state track meet in three events in his senior year. Jordan graduated from high school in 1995 and was accepted at Luther College, Decorah, Iowa.
While at Luther, he developed a large circle of friends with which he maintains contact to this day.
After graduation from college, he followed his passion for the great outdoors and took a summer job at Wilderness Canoe Base at the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. WCB had a busy summer that year; more than twenty young people were hired on as camp counselors/canoe guides. Included in that group was a tall, pretty, smiley girl from Corpus Christi, Texas. When he saw her, Jordan thought to himself, “Wow, she’s out of my league”. It was Megan Kathleen McCrossin. She didn’t consider herself out of Jordan’s league at all.
In spite of the non-fraternization rule for the counselors at the camp, Jordan and Megan’s marriage was just one of four that resulted from the summer of 1999. They were married in an outside chapel at the camp on September 27, 2003.
Jordan received a Master’s Degree in Social Work from the University of Tennessee, Nashville in 2007. He now lives with Megan and their daughter Molly, born February 13, 2007, in McMinnville, OR. He manages a camp for overweight teenagers.