Thomas Robison was born in about 1744. A resident of Caswell County, North Carolina, he may have served as a sergeant in the 5th North Carolina Regiment of the Continental Line using the name of Thomas Roberts from 1777 to 1779. He then reenlisted as a private in the 5th North Carolina from 1779 to 1780. After his first wife Rachel died in 1780, he married Mary English, who took on the responsibility of raising the Robison children while her husband was away in the army. In 1781 Thomas Robison served as a private in the Caswell County Regiment of the North Carolina Militia. At the end of his term of service, Thomas Robison was discharged at Hillsborough, North Carolina.

After the war he and his extended family moved to Tennessee, where he resided for the remainder of his life. He made an application for a veteran's pension in 1832, but was unsuccessful in finding archival sources that would authenticate the term of service he served. His application was all the more difficult because he had spelled his last name as Roberts, Robertson, Robinson, and Robison over the years, and therefore there was no consistency in the archival record. By 1821, Robison had aged to the point that he found it difficult to get out of his chair unassisted. Moreover, in his later years, Thomas Robison may have suffered from some form of dementia. His wife reported that he "almost reverted to childhood," and that "his memory was almost lost," and so she was unable to rely on him for support or to furnish more specific details about his wartime service. He died in Greene County, Tennessee on March 14, 1833.