Culture
Artist Lynn Carden Examines Eight Generations In ‘The Women of Robertson Place’
By: Emily Votaw
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Artist Lynn Carden has spent somewhere around 20 years examining the roots of her family’s history, and her work has culminated in a book entitled The Women of Robertson Place: A Family Saga. The book traces the matriarchal lineage that has passed down a Ross County property her family first settled on back in 1796 and continues to own today.
“Robertson Place is a historic home in Southern Ohio, in the Ross County region. It has been in my family since the Civil War. I am the fifth generation living in it,” said Carden. “(Robertson Place) is sort of the centerpiece of the story of the book, but really I’m writing about eight generations who settled in Ross County back in 1796, and who have stayed right here in this region for all these years. The Robertson family moved into this home, as I said, around the Civil War era and nobody ever moved out, which is kind of an unusual situation. They left behind a lot of artifacts, a lot of letters, and diaries and tin types and even items of clothing that allowed me to kind of reconstruct their lives. It’s really a local history told through the lives of these eight generations.”
Carden will be at the Pump House Center for the Arts (1 Enderlin Circle) in Chillicothe Sunday, September 12 starting at noon for a book talk and signing as well as a display of her illustrations in The Women of Robertson Place: A Family Saga.
The Women of Robertson Place: A Family Saga can be purchased locally at Wheatberry Books and The History Store. It can also be purchased on Amazon.