Journey to the Robinson-West River Plantation

About the Book

The reader of this book will be taken on a fascinating journey featuring Bill and Barbara West from their high school days in the 1950s to their eventual historic destiny with the Robinson River Plantation in Point Blank Texas. Carved out of the wilderness 160 years ago, the Robinson family from Alabama built and thrived on this land for 120 years and then sold it to the West family in 1978. Destiny arrived when the West family began to discover a multitude of incredible artifacts beneath the plantation earth, and began to uncover the rich historic legacy of the Robinson family. On this beautiful plantation along the Trinity River in East Texas, the Robinsons would experience great happiness and tragic sorrow, as did the West family with the loss of Barbara, only recently, to cancer. The book delivers eye-witness accounts of life changing events in the Robinson family, and lists many of the artifacts found, with follow-up research done by the author. From the days of General Sam Houston dancing in the foyer of the Victorian house, to the sounds of many children laughing and playing, to the designation of the plantation as a State Archeological Landmark, the reader will be captivated by this account of early Texas history.

About the Author

A graduate of Sam Houston High School in Houston, Bill West spent most of his childhood summers playing baseball in the city, and hunting and fishing in the piney woods of east Texas. In 1959, he was granted a baseball scholarship to Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona. Bill is a retired educator and coach, teaching school for 45 years, both in Arizona and Texas. While employed as a United States forest ranger in the summers of northern Arizona, he authored the non-fiction book ‘’Battle at Oak Creek,’’ which reflected the struggles of the forest ranger in trying to preserve and protect the natural beauty of the Sedona, Oak Creek Canyon area. Bill and his wife of 53 years, Barbara, were selected as the 1976 ‘Sedona Man & Woman of the Year.’ In 1978, Bill moved his family home to Texas, where he bought the historic Robinson plantation. In 2000, he was honored as ‘Teacher of the Year’ at the Huntsville ISD. In 2011, Bill published his first book about the plantation entitled, ‘To Live Again’, to which this book is a sequel.