Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of Lloyd M. Robinette of Lee, Virginia
In the first days of November 1951, voters in Lee and Scott counties went to the polls with a strange and sorrowful question hanging over the Sixteenth Senatorial District. Lloyd M. Robinette, the Democratic nominee and longtime state senator from Lee County, had died only days before the election. His name remained before the voters, and the result would decide whether the district stayed in the hands of a dead incumbent or passed to his Republican challenger, J. Marion Smith.
Smith won the race, but the election was remembered for more than its numbers. It marked the end of one of Lee County’s longest political careers. Robinette had been a schoolteacher, a Roanoke College graduate, a University of Virginia lawyer, a Jonesville attorney, a commonwealth’s attorney, and a state senator through some of Virginia’s most difficult political years.
In Blackwater and Jonesville, he was remembered in a more local way. Some called him the “Perry Mason of Blackwater,” a phrase that captured his reputation as a strong courtroom lawyer from the mountain counties of far Southwest Virginia.
A Blackwater Beginning
Lloyd Mileham Robinette was born at Blackwater in Lee County, Virginia. His exact birth year is one of the small but important problems in telling his story. Some later political and cemetery references give March 26, 1881. A detailed local biographical source, drawing from older family and county material, gives March 26, 1880. Until the death certificate, census records, and school records are checked together, the safest way to state it is that Robinette was born at Blackwater on March 26, probably in 1880, with 1881 appearing in several later references.
He came from a family long associated with Blackwater. His father, Samuel R. Robinette, was a Confederate veteran, and the family’s roots in Lee County reached back through several generations. The Robinette name remained tied to the Blackwater community, not only through politics and law, but through local business, memory, and family burial grounds.
Robinette grew up in a rural Lee County world where education was often a ladder built one rung at a time. He attended local schools, studied at Jonesville Academy, and taught in the public schools before he completed his own higher education. That path mattered. His later public life was not detached from the county that raised him. It began in the same schoolrooms, roads, churches, farms, and courthouse circles that shaped the young men and women of Lee County at the turn of the twentieth century.
Roanoke College and the University of Virginia
Robinette entered Roanoke College in 1904 and graduated in June 1906. Contemporary newspaper coverage of Roanoke College commencement identified L. M. Robinette of Blackwater, Virginia, among the students connected with the exercises. Later sketches remembered him as a strong student who graduated with high standing and took part in literary and student organizations.
After Roanoke, he studied law at the University of Virginia. Sources place him at the university’s law department in the years before 1910, and later University of Virginia student newspaper references connect Lloyd M. Robinette with Finals and with the law class of that period. He received his law degree and remained for a time as an instructor before returning to Southwest Virginia.
That return was important. Many educated mountain men left permanently for Richmond, Roanoke, Knoxville, or the national cities. Robinette came back to Lee County. He made Jonesville his legal home.
The Jonesville Lawyer
By the 1910s and 1920s, Robinette had built a legal career in Jonesville. He served as commissioner of accounts and inheritance commissioner, and he later became commonwealth’s attorney for Lee County. His office work and courtroom practice placed him in the center of county life.
The record of his law practice appears in scattered but valuable sources. Virginia Supreme Court cases list L. M. Robinette or Lloyd M. Robinette as counsel in matters reaching the state’s highest court. In Salyer Company v. Doss Company, a Lee County coal and business case decided in 1931, L. M. Robinette appeared for the appellant. In Southern Railway Co. v. Giles, decided in 1937, he was listed among counsel from Jonesville in a wrongful death case involving a railroad crossing in Lee County. In Federal Land Bank of Baltimore v. Clinchfield Lumber & Supply Co., decided in 1938, Lloyd M. Robinette of Jonesville appeared for the appellant. In Leigh v. Commonwealth, decided in 1951, he was still active enough in legal practice to appear in the record as one of the defendant’s attorneys.
These cases show the range of his practice. He was not only a local courthouse lawyer handling wills, deeds, and estates. He also handled coal, railroad, land, equity, and criminal matters that moved beyond Lee County and into statewide legal reporting.
The nickname “Perry Mason of Blackwater” came later, but it points toward the same memory. Robinette was remembered as a lawyer who knew how to argue, how to work a case, and how to stand before a court.
From County Politics to the State Senate
Robinette was a Democrat in a region where party loyalty was never simple. Lee County and neighboring Scott County often carried different political habits than the Democratic courthouse networks of Southside and Tidewater Virginia. Southwest Virginia could produce Democrats, Republicans, independents, labor men, courthouse men, and mountain political figures who did not always fit neatly into the Richmond map.
By 1931, Robinette had entered the race for the Virginia Senate. He represented the Sixteenth District, made up of Lee and Scott counties. His service began in January 1932, during the early years of the Great Depression. For nearly twenty years, he carried those counties to Richmond.
His career in the Senate overlapped with a changing Virginia. The state was still shaped by courthouse politics, poll taxes, segregation, rural roads, state institutions, and the growing power of the Byrd Organization. In Southwest Virginia, the issues were often closer to the ground. Roads, schools, coal, land, public spending, veterans, and courthouse authority mattered in daily life.
Newspaper records show Robinette active in Democratic Party meetings before and during his time in the Senate. In 1930, the Marion Democrat reported L. M. Robinette of Lee County moving that John W. Flannagan be nominated by acclamation. In later years, newspapers placed him in congressional district politics, legislative debate, budget hearings, and state party conventions.
A Southwest Virginia Democrat
Robinette’s politics are best understood as both local and statewide. He was a Lee County Democrat, but he was not simply a silent member of the Richmond order. Later historians have connected him with the anti-Byrd side of Virginia Democratic politics, especially during the struggles around the 1948 presidential election and the divisions inside the state party.
That mattered because the Byrd Organization was one of the most powerful political machines in twentieth-century Virginia. To be named among its opponents was to occupy a difficult position. It meant working inside the Democratic Party while also resisting the power of its dominant faction.
Robinette’s public record shows him moving within that complicated world. He supported and placed names before conventions. He took part in debates and hearings. He represented a mountain district where national Democratic programs, local courthouse politics, and Virginia’s conservative statewide structure often collided.
He was not a governor, congressman, or national figure. His importance was different. He was one of the men who carried Appalachian Virginia into the state capital through the middle decades of the twentieth century.
The 1947 Race
The 1947 state senate race shows how competitive the Sixteenth District could be. Robinette ran as the Democratic nominee against Republican C. S. Pendleton Sr. The official Virginia Elections Database records Robinette as the winner with 9,211 votes to Pendleton’s 8,375.
That was not an overwhelming margin. Robinette won with a little more than 52 percent of the vote. The result reflected the divided political character of Lee and Scott counties. In many parts of Virginia, a Democratic nomination could be close to election. In the far southwestern counties, Republicans could still make the race real.
Robinette survived that challenge and returned to Richmond. By then, he was no newcomer. He had become one of the long-serving senators of the region.
The Final Campaign
In 1951, Robinette again stood for the Sixteenth District seat. His Republican opponent was J. Marion Smith, a Lee County political figure who had served in the House of Delegates. The race already had the character of a serious contest before tragedy overtook it.
On Friday, November 2, 1951, Robinette died in Jonesville. Contemporary newspapers reported his death as a suicide. The timing created an unusual legal and political problem. Election Day was November 6. Ballots had been printed, voters were ready, and Robinette’s name remained before the district.
Newspapers reported that the attorney general had advised party leaders in Lee and Scott counties on the question of votes cast for a deceased candidate. The issue was not only personal grief. It became a question of election law, party strategy, and voter intent.
The official result gave J. Marion Smith the seat with 10,383 votes. Robinette, though already dead, received 9,605 votes. Nearly half the district still voted for his name.
That result says something about both men. It shows Smith’s strength as a Republican challenger in Lee and Scott counties. It also shows Robinette’s long hold on the voters who had known him as a lawyer, party man, and senator for two decades.
What Lee County Remembered
Lloyd M. Robinette’s life sits at the meeting point of courthouse law and mountain politics. He was born in Blackwater, educated beyond the county, and then returned to build his career in Jonesville. He practiced law in local and state courts. He served Lee County in public office. He represented Lee and Scott counties in the Virginia Senate from the Depression years through the early Cold War.
His story also reminds us how many Appalachian political lives are scattered across records instead of preserved in a single book. A college commencement notice, a law case, a state election return, a party convention article, a cemetery record, and a death notice each hold one part of him. Put together, they show a man who belonged deeply to Lee County and also to the larger political life of Virginia.
Robinette was not only the senator who died before Election Day. He was a Blackwater boy who taught school, studied law, returned home, argued cases, built influence, and carried the voice of two mountain counties to Richmond for nearly twenty years.
For Lee County, that is the larger story. Lloyd M. Robinette was one of the courthouse men of Appalachian Virginia, a lawyer from Blackwater whose career stretched from a rural schoolroom to the floor of the Virginia Senate.
Sources & Further Reading
Virginia Elections Database. “Lloyd M. Robinette.” Commonwealth of Virginia. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://historical.elections.virginia.gov/candidate/54623
Virginia Elections Database. “1947 Nov 4 General Election, State Senate District 16.” Commonwealth of Virginia. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://historical.elections.virginia.gov/contest/79630
Virginia Elections Database. “J. Marion Smith.” Commonwealth of Virginia. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://historical.elections.virginia.gov/candidate/54686
Virginia Elections Database. “J. Marion Smith.” Commonwealth of Virginia. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://historical.elections.virginia.gov/candidates/view/J-Marion-Smith
Dodson, E. Griffith. The General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1940–1960: Register and Biographies of Members of the General Assembly and 1945 and 1956 State Constitutional Conventions. Richmond: State Publication, 1961. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006260269
Dodson, Edward Griffith. The General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1940–1960. Richmond: State Publication, 1961. Google Books. https://books.google.com/books/about/The_General_Assembly_of_the_Commonwealth.html?id=Klp5AAAAIAAJ
Leonard, Cynthia Miller. The General Assembly of Virginia, July 30, 1619–January 11, 1978: A Bicentennial Register of Members. Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1978. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015005170327
“Lloyd Robinette, the ‘Perry Mason of Blackwater.’” My Long Hunters, August 4, 2015. https://www.mylonghunters.info/lloyd-robinette-the-perry-mason-of-blackwater
FamilySearch. “Lloyd Mileham Robinette, 1880–1951.” FamilySearch. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/L4BJ-8SD/lloyd-mileham-robinette-1880-1951
Find a Grave. “Lloyd Mileham Robinette.” Find a Grave Memorial no. 84831144. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/84831144/lloyd-mileham-robinette
“Roanoke College Commencement.” Tazewell Republican, June 21, 1906. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=TR19060621.1.4
“Page 1.” Marion Democrat, March 25, 1930. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=MRDMC19300325.1.1
“Page 2.” Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, March 4, 1944. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=NVP19440304.1.2
“Page 6.” Richmond News Leader, February 27, 1946. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=RNL19460227.1.6
“Page 1.” Lebanon News, April 2, 1948. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=LN19480402.1.1
“Page 1.” Virginia Mountaineer, February 2, 1950. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=VM19500202.1.1
“Page 1.” Lebanon News, March 31, 1950. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=LN19500331.1.1
“Page 1.” Daily Review, November 5, 1951. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=DRV19511105.1.1
“Page 1.” Northern Virginia Daily, November 6, 1951. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=NVD19511106.1.1
“Page 1.” Peninsula Enterprise, November 15, 1951. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com
Washington and Lee University School of Law Scholarly Commons. “Record No. 3542, Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia.” Virginia Supreme Court Records. https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/context/va-supreme-court-records-vol190/article/1058/filename/0/type/additional/viewcontent/190VA619_3542_Petition_for_Writ_of_Error.pdf
Federal Land Bank of Baltimore v. Clinchfield Lumber & Supply Co., 171 Va. 118, 198 S.E. 437. Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, 1938. https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/fed-land-bank-of-894446372
Salyer Company v. Doss Company. Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/salyer-company-v-doss-894219516
Leigh v. Commonwealth, 192 Va. 583, 66 S.E.2d 586. Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, 1951. https://law.justia.com/cases/virginia/supreme-court/1951/3992-1.html
Sweeney, J. R. “The Virginia Democratic Party and the Presidential Election of 1948.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 82, no. 1 (1974): 3–31. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4247894
Sweeney, J. R. “The Virginia Democratic Party and the Presidential Election of 1948.” Old Dominion University Digital Commons. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=history_fac_pubs
Heinemann, Ronald L. Harry Byrd of Virginia. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996. https://books.google.com/books?id=1SiS_MJvGyAC
University of Virginia Library. “Harry F. Byrd Papers.” Archives and Special Collections. https://archives.lib.virginia.edu/repositories/3/resources/654
The Political Graveyard. “Robinette, Lloyd Mileham.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/robb-rochefort.html
The Political Graveyard. “Index to Politicians: Robinette.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/robb-rochefort.html
Internet Archive. Powell Valley News (1925). https://archive.org/stream/powell-valley-news-1925/Powell%20Valley%20News%20%281925%29_djvu.txt
Internet Archive. Powell Valley News (1951). https://archive.org/stream/powell-valley-news-1951/Powell%20Valley%20News%20%281951%29_djvu.txt
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Virginia.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-states/virginia/
Author Note: Lloyd M. Robinette’s story is built from election records, court cases, newspaper accounts, and local memory, but his birth year still needs final confirmation against the death certificate and census record. I have kept that uncertainty visible because mountain history is strongest when it admits where the record is still unsettled.