[3][4] It is named for Sterling C. Robertson,[5] an early settler who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence.

Robertson County is in east-central Texas and is part of the College Station-Bryan, TX metropolitan statistical area.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 865 sq mi (2,240 km2), of which 856 square miles (2,220 km2) are land and 9.7 sq mi (25 km2) (1.1%) are covered by water.

As of the census[12] of 2000, 16,000 people, 6,179 households, and 4,356 families were residing in the county.

Robertson County was a longtime Democratic stronghold, as were many rural Southern counties during the Jim Crow and immediate post-Jim Crow eras (It had only voted for a Republican in the national Republican landslide of 1972, and even then, only by a single vote).

In 2000, the last time the county went to a Democrat (Al Gore), it was one of only three majority-white rural counties (with Newton and Morris) to vote for Bill Clinton's former vice president.