"Ada Robinson Kinney"

Written by Joy Dun Shoemaker

Ada Robinson Kinney holding pictures of her father, John Robinson (on left), and her grandfather, Thomas Curtis.

Ada Robinson was born in Sabina, the eighth child of John and Anna Belle Curtis Robinson. Her father was born in 1840 in Ross County, near Chillicothe where he grew up. Ada knew from an early age that her father had fought in the Civil War, as she had heard him speak of the hardships of fighting a war with little food to eat and without proper clothing to wear. When the food ran out, the troops ate snakes, rabbits or whatever they could find to kill and cook. When their shoes wore out, they went barefoot. In 1862, Congress authorized the recruitment of black men into battle, but it took a full year before the first black man was allowed to put on a blue coat and serve under white officers. John was part Cherokee Indian, but he joined the Union Army because he wanted the North to win the war and abolish slavery.

Two hundred thousand black men served in the Union Army in the Civil War. Black privates were paid ten dollars a month, three dollars less than whites. Blacks were denied the clothing allowance granted the whites, which caused them to be more susceptible to severe weather, and white doctors proved reluctant to serve with them, so the black soldiers received little care for their injuries and ailments. John Robinson fought gallantly until the close of the war, received an honorable discharge, and returned home. He married Rachel Whailey and in the ensuing years the couple had sixteen children. He moved his wife and family to a farm a mile north of Sabina, but in 1890 his wife died, leaving him with several young children to care for. In 1896, he married Anna Belle Curtis, a young woman of 26. By that time, John was 56 years old and had children older than his bride. The couple then had eight children of their own, although one of the eight died in infancy. Anna Belle Curtis was born in Brown County in 1870. Her parents, Thomas G. and Malinda Means Curtis, were born into slavery and before their escape into Ohio, lived in Maysville, Kentucky. A photograph of Malinda shows a light-skinned woman with beautiful eyes and a lovely smile, projecting a self-assurance that all women strive for, but few achieve. She was a maid in the household of her white owners; however, it is more than likely that John was not a house man, as he carried welts on his back from having been whipped with a buggy whip. After Thomas and Malinda escaped to Ohio, Thomas joined the Union forces and fought against the South. In 1877, he and Malinda and their seven year old daughter, Anna Belle, moved by horse-drawn wagon from Brown County to Sabina. John Robinson was always interested in horses, especially the strong, but gentle, Belgian draft horse. When he moved to Sabina from Chillicothe, he brought his beautiful horses with him and continued to raise them on his farm. When Ada was a small child, John went to work for Fred Cole, a large landowner, who owned a farm on SR 729 south of Sabina. John took care of the horses on Cole's farm, working for him until his health failed and he had to retire. Fred was good to his employee and to John's children. At Christmas time, he gave each of the five boys a corduroy suit and the two girls received five dollars each. Even after John was no longer able to work, Fred would give him money and buy the children ice cream cones or soda pop when he saw them downtown. When Ada was sixteen, her father died. He was 85 years old, two years older than her maternal grandfather, who had died four years earlier. Josephine Rapp Parrett, the daughter of Joseph and Cathryn Rapp, who in 1835 built and operated the Rapp House, a famous inn and eating establishment in Sabina, became quite obese in her later years. She was so heavy that she was unable to lean over and put on her shoes. She lived with her son, Dr. J. Lang Parrett, and his wife Margaret, who hired Ada to stop in each morning on her way to school and wash Josephine's feet, change her stockings, put her shoes on and tie her shoe strings. All for 25 cents. On Saturdays, Ada worked for Margaret Parrett cleaning house. She would run the sweeper and dust the furniture. One day Mrs. Parrett instructed Ada to go into the dining room and dust the candelabra. Ada stayed in there so long that Mrs. Parrett came in to see what she was doing. She said, "Did you dust the candelabra, Ada?" Ada replied, "I don't know what the candelabra is." Ada always had nice clothes to wear to school. During the summer months when she was out of school, she would visit her half-sisters, who were financially well off, and they would buy her new dresses, shoes and all the clothes she would need for the coming school year. Her sister, Alfreda, liked to knit and crochet and would make tams and other clothing for Ada to wear, so she always had a selection of outfits to choose from. When she was sixteen years old, Ada quit school and went to work for private families. Later, she married Moses Kinney and moved to Wilmington, his hometown. She worked at different jobs in Wilmington until World War II began and she found out that the war related plants were paying big money. She and four women from Wilmington went to Wright Field in Fairborn and applied for jobs. They were told the only openings available were cleaning the restrooms and offices. They were all dressed nicely and were quite capable of filling out a job application properly, but the personnel manager rejected them. At the same time, he hired white applicants who came in filthy dirty and with an obvious lack of education. Because school teachers' salaries were so low, many of them applied for jobs at Wright Field. When they filled out an application stating they had a college degree, the personnel manager could not turn them down because they were not white. Once the school teachers were hired, Ada and her friends were accepted also. Ada was assigned to the "Procurement" department. She was in an office with eleven men and women - all white. Everyone had his own filing cabinets and there were about 200 of them altogether. The filing cabinets held the information about where parts for airplanes in production could be located. If someone from an airplane factory called in and requested a particular part for a plane that was in production, Ada would go to the file cabinet and find what company (such as Pratt and Whitney) made the part. She would then call that company and tell them to mail the part to the airplane factory that had requested it. The job required a lot of memorizing of information filed in the cabinets. Ada worked at Wright Field for ten years. She made friends with her co-workers and many of them invited her to their homes for parties and get-togethers. The women she became closest to, though, were the school teachers who had paved the way for her to be accepted at Wright Field. They liked to travel and invited her to come along with them. Their first trip was to Denver, Colorado, where they were from, to visit their parents. They had located in Ohio some years before so that they could attend Wilberforce University. After the war was over, they took trips out of the country. They went to South America, visiting Venezuela and Argentina, and they went to Hawaii. They traveled to every state in the Union and went across the border of Arizona into Mexico. Traveling was exciting and educational. When the Methodist Camp Grounds in Sabina held their yearly meetings, the people who attended came from near and far to stay the week or so in the cabins on the grounds. Ada and her sister did laundry for some of the men who wanted their shirts starched and ironed so that they looked their best. On one of her trips, Ada was aboard a passenger ship when she struck up a conversation with another passenger who was from Indianapolis. The woman asked Ada where she was from. Ada said, "Oh, my, you have never heard of the town I'm from. It's just a small village in Ohio called Sabina." The woman was quite excited in telling Ada that she knew exactly where Sabina was, as her children spent some time at the Methodist Camp Grounds every summer. "Well, you came right by my house," Ada told her. She didn't mention that she and her sister made a nice amount of money from doing laundry for some of the campers.

Ada Robinson Kinney in her new Frazer-Manhattan car.

In 1948, while she was still employed at Wright Field, Ada was driving to and from Fairborn in a less than perfect automobile. One day at work, she was approached by a girl who was selling tickets to raise money for a children's swimming pool. The tickets were 25 cents each or five for a dollar. Ada looked in her purse, came up with 75 cents, all she had, and bought three tickets. She went home and forgot about the tickets until she received a phone call telling her she had won a new Frazer Manhattan, four-door, sedan with one of the tickets she had bought. She had a choice of taking $2500 cash or the car. To Ada, it wasn't a choice. She needed the car. Ada had a son,Donald Kinney, who was in the Navy during part of the years she was at Wright Field. When she left the Field, Donald received the car.

Ada moved back to Sabina and in the early 1950s she went to work for Dr. Thomas Faehnle and Mrs. Faehnle. Loretta Faehnle was expecting her second child and needed help in the home. Ada worked for them for twenty years, taking care of Tommy and Patrick and then Jenny, as though they were her own. Patrick called her "Mother." When his playmates came around, they would say, "Ask your other mother if you can come out and play." After the Faehnles no longer needed her, she bought a house in Wilmington and went there to live. The house needed so many repairs that she was at Clifford Camp's lumber yard about every week. When she told Clifford that she was looking for work, he said, "I know just the job for you. It's at Midland School." He was on the school board there and she soon was working with the kindergarten age children who attended the school. They were so young and some of them so unhappy about being away from home that she spent much of her time taking them into a room and trying to quiet them down with consoling words and distractions. When she left Midland School, she went back to Sabina to live with her brothers, who wanted her to do their housekeeping for them. They all lived in the homeplace where her parents had lived. She had five brothers: McKinley, Wilbur (called Woody),Gilbert, Frank, and Alfred. Woody was in the thoroughbred horse business. He had his own horses and took them from coast to coast for the races he had entered them in. He came in one morning and ask Ada if she would like to go to California. The horses were being transported by truck and he had to be there before they arrived. What he really wanted was for her to drive the car. It was a new car and nice to drive, but the only time Woody took the wheel was when they entered a big city, as Ada refused to drive through the heavy traffic. Woody was a good looking man and had girl friends wherever he went. He had a way with the ladies but never married. Ada met her brother's friends and had a good time while she was in California, which was for about two weeks. Woody also made and sold horse liniment and liniment for arthritis and rheumatism pain. He mixed the liniment in 50 gal.drums in the backyard. He had bottles with labels printed "Woody's Leg Paint - For Veterinary Use Only. Apply w/brush and set in cotton." Some of the ingredients were: Peppermint oil, spirits of gum, turpentine, cedar leaf oil, camphor and ether. When the horses came in lame, they would be rubbed down with the liniment and the next day they were ready to race again. Woody shipped his liniment all over the United States. Today, at 91 years old, Ada continues to have many friends, although she wonders at times why she has outlived so many family members and friends. She thinks of herself as a woman of color. When she was asked if she were black, she said, "My shoes are black. I'm colored." She's not African-American, she says. She didn't come from Africa. She's American. Ada is a woman of great perception. She understands people, and has a sensitivity for the frailties of others. Her mother, who died in 1947, was a very religious person who found comfort in working in her garden and especially in raising flowers. She instilled in Ada the same love of flowers and gardening. Ada has beautiful roses by her front steps that have lasted far into the cool, fall weather. She lives two doors from the house her parents lived in and where she grew up. At the corner of the house is a white rose bush that is over one hundred years old. In the summertime the blooms are in abundance, but so are the thorns that line the stems. Ada keeps the bushes trimmed back so that children won't get stuck by them. It is not surprising that she has this concern for the little ones passing by.