Son of Isaac Watts Robinson and Deborah Thomas

In 1850 he lived in Phillips, Franklin County, Maine, with father, stepmother, brother Elisha, and 2 half-siblings. His father was a farmer.

In 1860 he lived in Township 4, Range 4, Aroostook County, Maine, with father, stepmother, brother Elisha, and half-siblings Deborah and Charles. He, brother Elisha, and their father were farmers.

During the Civil War, he enlisted 13 Aug 1863, at the age of 31, as a Private in Company B, 8th Infantry Regiment, Maine. He was wounded on 20 May 1864 at the battle of Ware Bottom Church, Chesterfield County, Virginia, and was in hospital for some time. He was discharged on 17 May 1865, at the end of the war. He later returned to military service and was promoted several times, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

He received a Congressional Gold Medal for saving the life of Secretary of State William H. Seward on 14 April 1865, the night President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Seward was attacked in his home by one of the same band of assassins who killed Lincoln. Robinson had been assigned as a guard to Secretary Seward, who was ill in bed at the time, and although himself still recovering from battle wounds, fought off the assassin, receiving more wounds in the fight.

In 1965, the Civil War Centennial Commission renamed May Mountain in Island Falls, Maine to Robinson Mountain in his honor. Mount Sergeant Robinson, in the Chugach Mountain Range in Alaska, was also named after George Foster Robinson for saving the life of Secretary Seward, who later purchased Alaska for the United States.

There is a cenotaph for him in Hartford, Maine next to his mother's gravestone.

He married Roxinda Aurora Clark on 13 Jul 1865 in Springfield, Maine. They had children:

. George Prentiss Robinson (1866 - 1946)

. Edmund Clark Robinson (1875 - 1945)

+ sp: Myrtle Deck

In 1880 he was a military officer and lived in San Antonio, Texas, with his wife, 2 sons, mother in law and other relatives of his wife.

By 1892 he had retired from active military service and moved to Pomona, California, with his family.

His original handwritten Los Angeles County, California, death record gives the date as 13 Aug 1907, but a modern computer written database has it as 16 Aug, as does the grave stone. Another list, made in 1940, showing deaths in the City of Los Angeles, includes the names of George Robinson and his wife with a note that their names were to be "removed", apparently because they did not die within the city, but rather in Pomona, California. This note gives his death date as 16 Aug 1907.