I agree with Ber-get' a and Cin' dy! I speak some French and try to imagine the French and German pronunciations of all the possible variations of Roblee. The Rapelais (Ra pell ay) or Robillard (Ro bill yar) family probably had to deal with mispellings and pronunciations by the Netherlanders they travelled with in the 1600s and the Rapalje (Rah pbal ee) spelling seems a plausible change for the exceptionally literate Dutch at the time. With a heavy English acccent in the New England colonies during the Revolution, the enlistment people probably struggled with the name and the phonetic spelling became Robblee (Rob a lee) or Roblee (Rob lee). As I said before, it was pronounced two different ways where I grew up and I always thought they were two unrelated families, Roblee (Rob lee and Roe blee)! As a coworker used to say, "I don't care what you call me, just don't call me late for dinner." I welcome all corrections or additions to my thoughts by real linguists or other theories! Phyl' lis