NATIONAL JEWELER          53
Roswell. 
Don stepped in to manage 
the store, but it was a lot for a 
17-year-old boy to handle. Kyle 
remembers stories about his 
father getting “laughed out of 
banks” when he attempted to 
secure financing for the store. 
“My grandmother, in her 
leadership, saw something in 
my dad and believed in my dad 
to let him do that,” Kyle says. 
Robson’s Jewelers founder 
Robert Robson was born in 
North Shields, England, and 
trained in pocket watch and 
compass repair. He won a 
ticket for a spot on a ship to Amer-
ica and landed in Gulfport, Mississippi.
In the 1920s, the lure of Texas’ 
booming oil industry drew him to the 
Tri-Cities area outside of Houston (now 
known as Baytown), where he opened 
Robson’s Jewelers in 1926.  
Robert and his wife, Hattie Larson, 
had five children, all of whom worked in 
the family business. 
They passed the business down to 
their eldest daughter, Grace Hargrave, 
in the early 1940s, an “unusual” move 
at that time, notes Paul Hargrave, the 
fourth generation of the Robson/ 
Hargrave families to run Robson’s Jewelers.  
“My grandmother was pretty phenomenal,” 
he says. 
While women played pivotal roles in the 
development and survival of Robson’s Jewel-
ers and Bullock’s Jewelry, Kloiber Jewelers in 
Milwaukee is the only store on this centennial 
list run by a woman today. 
Emily Dahm is the owner of Kloiber Jewelers, 
the business Frank Kloiber started in 1926. 
As Emily tells it, Frank sold the business to 
his son Clyde Kloiber for a dollar. Clyde did 
not have any children, so he willed the business 
to two of his employees in 2001. 
One of them, Karin Volz, bought out her 
co-owner and ran the store until this past May, 
when she retired and sold the business to Emily.
Emily says when Karin first approached her 
about buying the store in January, it wasn’t a 
hard decision. 
“I love the store, I love jewelry, I love gem-
stones,” she says. “This is something I want to 
continue to do for the rest of my life.” 
Like any store that’s been in business for 
100 years, Kloiber Jewelers has survived the 
Great Depression, World War II, the turmoil 
of the ‘60s and ‘70s, the Great Recession, and 
COVID-19. 
Emily says the store saw a drop in sales in the 
early days of internet shopping, but its reputa-
tion, service, and team’s ability to help consumers 
filter through all the information online about 
jewelry, including the four Cs and the differences 
between natural and lab-grown diamonds, remain 
untouchable. 
“I find that a lot of our customers come to us 
SPECIAL
FEATURE
From top, Kloiber Jewelers founder Frank Kloiber with his loupe, the store as it looks today, 
and former owner Karin Volz (left) with current owner Emily Dahm

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