“Robbie Osborn”, age 14, was on the 1888 roll of Okemos Union School. Robert Alanson Osborne (or Osborn), born 30 October 1873, was the son of Union Civil War veteran Alanson Osborn, born in 1844, who succumbed to “complication of disease” on 24 May 1876. The senior Osborn, a carpenter by trade, left a grieving widow, Mary Ann (Button 1849-1930), and small son Robert. Alanson was laid to rest near the grave of his infant daughter Emma (1873) in Leek Cemetery, Okemos.

In 1880 Mary Ann married Samuel Nelson Huff, a Canadian. Sam, a widower with a daughter, was the local Okemos blacksmith and in the same year as his marriage to Mary Ann, had purchased a farm 1 mile north of Okemos. It was here that young Robert was raised. Sam and Mary Ann would later add to the family 2 daughters.

Like his step-father, Robert was a farmer. He grew to be a good sized man, tall and stout, and in 1895 married a local young lady of German stock, Mollie Anna Giersbrook. Mollie was born 7 July 1882 in Brooklyn, New York but her parents moved the family to Michigan, Alaiedon Township, about 1874. Robert and Mollie had one son, George, and lived all their quiet married lives in Meridian Township. Mollie succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage 18 February 1930. Robert followed in death 26 February 1939 from heart disease. Both were interred Leek Cemetery, Okemos under the surname spelling of Osborne.

Giersbrook, Mollie A. (married Robert Alanson Osborne 1895) obit, Lansing State Journal, Wednesday, February 19, 1930

Giersbrook, Mollie Anna (wife of Robert Alanson Osborne) obit, Ingham County News, 27 Feb 1930

Button, Mary Ann (1st Osborn, 2nd Huff) obit, Ingham County News, 20 Nov 1930

Osborne, Robert Alanson (married Mollie Giersbrook 1895) obit, Lansing State Journal, Friday, March 3,1939

Osborne, Robert Alanson (married Mollie Giersbrook 1895) Michigan Certificate of Death 1939