Following is one of the Biographies and Stories which where gathered by Charles Sumner McKamy in the 1950s for publication in a Crawford County History Book. Unfortunately he passed away before the book was published.
Robert Sherman Shirkliff, son of Robert F. and Anna Sherman Shirkliff, born November 6, 1904 in Marion, Indiana. My parents moved to Robinson in 1906 and I attended grade and high school in Robinson. I graduated from the University of Illinois in 1927 with a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering. I spent eleven years in the refinery in Aruba, Dutch West Indies with Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. This refinery was at one time one of the largest in the world and processed as high as 300,000 barrels crude per day from Venezuela. During World War II, I worked for Standard Oil of New Jersey at various refineries in the United States, Canada and Cuba. I joined the Ohio Oil Company at Robinson in 1945 to aid in construction and operation of the new refinery here and am still employed here.
I married Ethel Haug of Paris, Illinois in 1948.