Submitted by Descendants: Dr. Richard Daniel CASON and Caroline Hollis Cason PRANGE
Robert Sandlin, the son of John Sanderlin, was born in North Carolina on 3 April 1790. (Robert and his son Jessee changed the last name from Sanderlin to Sandlin in the mid-1800s.) Robert spent his early years in Georgia where he married Zilpha Hicks, the daughter of John Hicks, on 12 December 1821. Their first son Jessee Robert was born in Georgia in 1824. Shortly after the birth of Jessee Robert the family moved to Alachua County, Florida to the portion that is now Suwannee River. The two nearest towns were Benton and Blount’s Ferry. Both of which are no longer in existence. He was one of the founders of the Prospect Primitive Baptist Church which was founded in late 1839. The church was located near present State Road 6 where it crosses the Suwannee River and still remains an active church in that location today. Robert was ordained deacon before the founding of Prospect Church.
There were many hardships and dangers in frontier life including Indian raids and attacks upon the settlers, therefore Robert spent much time in the field with the Militia. Robert was an officer in the Columbia Rangers, a mounted militia regiment. His young son Jessee Robert was about fourteen years old when we first find evidence of him serving in the same militia company as his father. There was sometimes a real lack of provisions because the militia was away for extended periods of time and could not properly tend the farms. The letters of Colonel Brown in his correspondence to Florida Governor Call discussed the severe needs of the pioneers and also the massacres of several of the families in the Counties of Columbia, Hamilton, Suwannee, and Alachua.
Robert was the forefather of the prominent Sandlin family in Hamilton, Suwannee and Columbia Counties.
Robert Sandlin was first established as a Florida Pioneer in 1983