Isaiah Robbins (b. ca. 1822), a carpenter who worked in the small river town of Hertford, Perquimans County, is among the few antebellum builders in the county for whom any specific buildings are documented. In 1851 he agreed to build the Greek Revival style Temperance Hall in Hertford according to a detailed set of specifications (reproduced in Haley and Winslow, The Historic Architecture of Perquimans County). Robbins signed the agreement on July 1 and promised to complete the work by October 1, 1851. The frame structure was to measure 32 by 26 feet and to have a well-braced frame (with heart timber specified for some elements), interior end chimneys, stoves and stove pipes, and a porch “neatly corniced.” The ends of the roof were to “project over the body of the house, and be finished like the ends of the house built by Dr. Skinner”—possibly the Greek Revival style Wilson Reed House evidently built by Dr. Nathaniel Skinner about 1850. (Such references to components of existing buildings were frequent in construction documents of this and other periods.) Robbins may have built the Skinner house and other Greek Revival houses in the town and county. Listed in the 1850 census as a carpenter living with his wife, Emily, in that year Robbins was one of fourteen free men listed as carpenters in the county. By 1860 he was identified as a miller.

• Dru Gatewood Haley and Raymond A. Winslow, Jr., The Historic Architecture of Perquimans County, North Carolina (1982).
• Caleb Winslow Papers, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, North Carolina.