THE
DESCENDANTS OF
DR. WILLIS ROBERTS
|
& ASENATH ALEXANDER |
(a work in progress) |
| This
is a joint effort to preserve and share the history of Dr. Willis Roberts and Asenath Alexander
and their descendants
|
Dr.
Willis Roberts |
Portrait
circa 1840 |
Husband:
Dr.
Willis Roberts (1779-1853)
DOB 8 Feb 1779 in
South Carolina (See
Roberts Ancestry)
DOD
23 Dec 1853 in Mobile, Alabama, "age 74"; burial 24 DEC 1853 per
Burial Records of Mobile County 1820-1856 by Mitchell & Moffett, page 194
Willis
Roberts' plot, Church Street Cemetery, Mobile, AL
Married
21 Feb 1801 in Wilkes Co., Georgia, to
Wife: Asenath Alexander (1783-1833)
DOB
23 Jun 1783 in Wilkes Co., GA, daughter
of Revolutionary War soldier Samuel
Alexander.
(See Alexander Ancestry)
DOD 3
Feb. 1833 in Mobile, AL, age 49; burial: Willis Roberts family
plot, Church Street Cemetery, Mobile, AL Pillans family
records say b. 27 Jun 1783.
Children of Willis Roberts & Asenath
(Alexander) Roberts: (See
Willis Roberts' family census records)
1.
Olivea Alexander Roberts
(23 Jun
1804 - 1 Sep 1882) married four times, lived in Mobile, AL, Galveston, TX,
New Orleans, LA
2. Mary
Herndon Roberts (2 Oct 1806 - 2 Aug 1822) died
age 15 in Cahawba, AL
3. Samuel
Alexander Roberts (13 Feb 1809 - 18 Aug 1872)
married 8 APR 1842 to Mrs. Lucinda Mary (Gary) Reed, lived in Bonham, TX
4. Joel
Abbot Roberts (6 Jan
1811 - 7 Aug 1863) married Mary T.
Bolles, lived in Mobile, AL
5.
Sophia
Lowry Roberts (9 Jan 1813 - 2 Apr 1878) married
John A. Settle, lived in San Antonio, TX, and New Orleans, LA
6. Emily
Rogers Roberts (14 Jan 1816 -
2 Jul 1833) died age 17 in Mobile,
AL
(another source says DOB 17 Dec 1815)
7.
Reuben Herndon Roberts
(30 Sep 1817 - 30 May 1884) married Martina T.
Quigley, lived in TX & Mobile, AL
8. Laura
Malvina Roberts (25 Sep 1819- 20 Aug 1883)
married Palmer Job Pillans, lived in Mobile, AL
9. Willis
Roberts, Jr. (b.19 Mar 1822)
10. Seth
Willis Roberts (b.
22 Dec 1823, d. Dec
1880) married
Claudine LaCoste and lived in Mobile, AL
This
is a group effort to preserve and share the Roberts family history
Comments,
Corrections &
Contributions
GEORGIA
1807
PUTNAM COUNTY, GEORGIA was laid out in 1807, named after
General Israel Putnam. Part was added to Jones County in 1810. The Oconee and Little Rivers are the main streams.
EATONTON was and still is the county seat, 22 miles from Milledgeville
in Baldwin County. Among the early settlers of this county
were; Wm. Wilkins, Benjamin Williamson, John Lamar, John
Buckner, Eli S. Shorter, Stephen Marshall, John McBride,
Capt. Vesey, James Hightower, John Trippe, Isaac Moreland,
John White, Benjamin Whitfield, Joseph Cooper, Josiah
Flournoy, M. Pounds, Ward Hill, Rev. Richard Pace, Rev. John
Collingsworth, Jesse Bledsoe, Wm. Turner, Willis Roberts,
Mark Jackson, Peter F. Holt, James Kendrick, Reuben
Herndon, T. Wooldridge, Joseph Turner, Warren Jackson,
Edward Trayler, Samuel M. Echols, James Echols, E.
Abercrombie, Matthew Gage, Thos. Napier, Wm. Jackson.
(GEORGIA'S LANDMARKS, MEMORIALS AND LEGENDS by
Lucian Lamar Knight, Atlanta 1913, p 865)
1810
November 8, 1810, the general assembly of the State of Georgia confirmed the
appointment of Willis Roberts as a Justice of the Inferior Court of Putnam
County, Georgia, approved November 22, 1810. See
Further: Acts
of the Georgia Legislature, 1810 Vol. 1, page 160 (In
the Legislative Acts search for Willis Roberts)
1811
Deed written: March 28, 1811
Recorded: April 9, 1811
Putnam County, Deed Book B, page 115, Lot 29, District 19, Morgan County
Property deed witnessed in presence of Lewis Kennon, Christopher B Strong,
Barnes Hollaway, Senr, Willis Roberts J.I.C. Recorded the 9th Day of April
1811.
1817
The Alabama Territory was created when
Mississippi gained statehood in 1817.
Old Cahawba Land Office Records & Military Warrants'
Records of the Receivers Office in Milledgeville, GA, show in book 300 that on
August 16, 1817, Willis Roberts of Putnam County, Georgia, purchased land
located in Township 16, Range 17 and on March 25, 1819, he and J. A. Elmon of
Autauga County purchased land in Township 18, Section 17. Old
Cahawba Land Office Records & Military Warrants, page 1 and page 22.
1818
Governor
William Rabun’s November 3, 1818, address to the Senate and House of
Representatives, pages eight and nine, recounts the legislature's authorization
on December 19, 1817, to appoint a suitable person to examine the
navigable waterways and report on the practicability of improvement and
estimate of the expense to do so, and best mode of accomplishment. After
frequent disappointments, he states on page nine that he finally procured Dr.
Willis Roberts of Putnam County. Roberts began at Fort Hawkins, examined
the Ocmulgee River to its junction with the Oconee River, then returned,
intending to resume at Barnett Shoals.
"Indisposition
however prevented him, and he resigned." (Document
TCC458, Southeastern
Native American Documents, 1730-1842, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
The University of Georgia Libraries, Telamon Cuyler Collection, box 47, folder
13, document 01.)
An
undated three-page document (KRC138) also in the Digital Library of
Georgia appears to be a draft of the same report, but gives further
detail:
"He commenced at Fort Hawkins and made a survey
of the Ocmulgee River down to the junction, and then repaired to Barnetts Shoals
on the Oconee, when himself and attendants, were all attacked with a
severe bilious Fever, which
continued untill (sic) he was reduced to
the necessity of resigning his appointment. -- His report will be found marked
No...." (number missing). The draft report goes on to state that in
August the Secretary of the War Department informed that the President had
appointed Wilson Lumpkin as a commissioner to complete the study. (Repository:
Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, The University of Georgia
Libraries, Keith Read Collection, box 20, folder 50, document 03.)
The Mobile Register, in an article dated January 3, 1920, stated that Willis
Roberts had been one of the commissioners appointed to select a site for the new
Alabama capital. They selected Cahawba.
ALABAMA
1819
In May 1819 forty-year-old Dr. Willis Roberts left Putnam County, Georgia,
headed for the new territory, taking with him Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar, the
20-year-old son of his neighbors living at Fairfield Plantation, between
Eatonton and Milledgeville. They arrived to witness lots being surveyed at
the projected new city of Cahawba in Dallas County, which would lie at the
intersection of two of the territory's largest highways: the confluence of
the Cahawba and Alabama Rivers. Roberts was personal secretary to
Territorial Governor Dr.
William Wyatt Bibb, also a Georgia physician, so expectations were high
when Roberts moved his family to Cahawba and opened a mercantile store, Roberts
& Battle, in partnership with James Battle. The Roberts family included Willis, his wife,
Asenath, and their children
Olivea (14), Mary, (12), Samuel
(10), Joel (8), Sophy (6), Emily (3), Reuben (1 and a half) and their residence was
on lot 151, at the intersection of Alabama and 2nd South Streets. Their young partner, Lamar, who turned 21 years old that
August, wrote that in the fall of 1819 he went to New York to arrange for a
proper supply of merchandise, then in early December sailed into the port of
Mobile. "Impatient to proceed on my journey (for more reasons than
one), I set off on foot, accompanied by two other persons, Luther Blake and
Nathan Sargent." The merchandise was later forwarded up the Alabama
River on keel boats. When Lamar and his companions arrived in Cahawba, a new
baby had arrived in the Roberts family: Baby Laura had been born in the
new city on September 25.
As M. B. Lamar wrote in his journal of Cahawba: "There was
not another community more representative of the South's best culture than this
new capital. No people in all America sat down to more bounteous dinners,
served by better servants on richer mahogany. No people rode better
groomed horses, or spoke their vernacular with gentler accents." Philip
Graham, in his superlative 1938 book The Life and Poems of Mirabeau B.
Lamar, states on page 11:
|
|
 Crocheron mansion at Cahawba. Photos from an antique book, Ghosts of Cahawba |
|
.
|
From
the index of
Memories of Old Cahaba:
Roberts family,
p. 76--remembered in song here;
Roberts, Bob, 1852-60, p.22--Probate Court Clerk; large-hearted man of
generous impulses, made a popular officer, generally beloved, especially by the
children, to whom he was always kind and liberal; died in the early 60s; p.
78--mentioned here with several others as "high officials of the
county"; p. 83--...of generous heart...;
Roberts, Willis, 1819, p.11--1 of 3 appointees of Gov. Bibb to
hold town's first election; (1818-1830), p.13--mentioned in an old account book,
Cahaba, 1818-1830
Memories of Old Cahaba copyright
1905 by Anna M. Gayle Fry,
Annual
Session: Acts November
22, 1819, p.
119
An act for the government of the
town of Cahawba.
| [119]
Sec. 6. And be it further enacted That Willis Roberts, Luther
Blake, and Carlisle Humphreys, shall be, and they are hereby appointed,
managers of the first election..." (Signed)
JAMES DELLET, Speaker of the
House of Representatives THOMAS BIBB, President of the Senate Approved -November 22nd, 1819 (Signed) WM. W. BIBB See Complete Act
|
Dellet Plantation at nearby Claiborne, Alabama |
1820
Two sessions of the
territorial legislature had met at the temporary capital of Saint Stephens in
southwest Alabama. In 1819 the Constitutional Convention and first session
of the General Assembly had met in Huntsville, in north Alabama (the
representatives met in the courthouse and the senate is believed to have met in
the house of John K. Dunn). In 1820 the second and subsequent sessions of
the legislature returned to Cahawba in the southwest, from 1820 to 1826;
thereafter Tuscaloosa became the state capital for twenty years.
(More) In
July 1820 Governor Bibb died in a fall from his horse and his brother Thomas,
the senate president, became governor. In November Willis Roberts was one
of the nominees for State Treasurer, but Jack Ferrill Ross received the most
votes.
As the mercantile store at Cahawba was not flourishing, Lamar sold his
interest in the business to his partner and became co-editor of the Cahawba
Press newspaper with William
Allen. Lamar's pen proved stimulating and each week he filled out the
margins of his newspaper with poetry and creative musings. Graham writes
that the Roberts family had moved on to Mobile in 1820, when Lamar began rooming
with Hewes the tailor at Curtis Bell's hotel. But newspapers in Cahawba
(later spelled Cahaba) mention Willis Roberts living there on up to at least
1824. Still, Lamar is said by his biographers to have made frequent visits down to the port city to visit the Roberts family before
returning to Georgia in 1823 to accept the position of Governor Troup's private
secretary. Roberts & Battle was dissolved April 14, 1821, and by October
28, 1821, he was advertising his new store on Alabama Street, opposite the Market
House. By October 5, 1822, the firm was advertising itself as Roberts,
Parsons & Co. Daughter Olivea Roberts married in Cahawba in 1821.
Another daughter,
Mary, died in Cahawba in August of 1822. Family records show that a son Willis Roberts, Jr., was born 19 March 1822; and
Willis Roberts 2nd was born Dec. 22, 1823, the latter presumed to be Seth Willis Roberts, which
census records say was born in Pennsylvania in 1820.
Roberts had been nominated again in 1821 for State
Treasurer and in 1823 as one of the directors of the Bank of the State of
Alabama. (Sources: The Life and Poems of Mirabeau B. Lamar (University of North
Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1938) by Philip Graham.);
Alabama House and Senate Journals)
1825 -
The May 14, 1825, issue of the Cahawba
Press lists Willis Roberts as one of 19 physicians permitted to practice
in Dallas County, Alabama. But by the time the floods began erasing the new city, Willis and family
appear to have moved on. March
6, 1824 the Cahawba press printed a notice that the Roberts property was being
sold. July 1, 1824, Samuel Alexander Roberts, age 15, was admitted to the U.S.
Military Academy at West Point, New York. October 30, 1824,
the newspaper listed W. Roberts as registered at the United States
Hotel, Mobile, Alabama. (Source:
Linda Derry) Notable
Men of Alabama (1904),
p. 125,
states that Dr. Willis Roberts removed from Cahawba to Mobile in 1827.
See List
of References to the Roberts family in Cahawba newspapers
See List
of References to Willis Roberts in Alabama House and Senate Journals
 |
Ruins
of the Perine mansion in Cahawba, Alabama's first
capital, a ghost town in the 1900s, an archeological dig by 2000. |
MOBILE, ALABAMA
1830
In addition to
being a physician, Willis Roberts was a skilled surveyor and
cartographer who drew an early map of Mobile which is mentioned in several
Mobile histories. His map of the Spring Hill area is still considered the
most authoritative. His appointment as superintendent
of the new Mobile City Hospital ensured that the hospital would represent the
finest architecture as well as the best medical services. The cornerstone
for the large Greek Revival building was laid in 1830. There exist many
letters in the city archives showing his promotion of the concept of matronized
nursing, long before Florence Nightingale's movement for training female nurses.
(Mobile Register,
Sunday, March 11, 1923).
An older hospital, the
Hospital Royal, built in 1760 at the corner of St. Anthony and St. Louis, became a slave market.
Read further
about Willis Roberts' tenure as superintendent of the City
Hospital of Mobile.
Dr. Roberts was also on the building committee for Barton Academy in 1835 and
insisted on hiring the best architects: James Gallier and the Dakin Brothers. (From Fort to Port, by Elizabeth Barrett Gould) It may be learned that he also had a hand in the building of the Presbyterian Church, in an advisory capacity if not on the building committee. His son Joel married in that church in 1840.Dr. Roberts owned many city lots and built many cottages near the City Hospital at the corner of Saint Anthony and Broad Streets, including a nearby townhouse on Government Street, damaged by fire and enlarged substantially by his son Joel 17 years later. Mobilians customarily retreated inland at certain times of the year to country homes, away from the "unhealthful conditions" along the coastline. The Roberts' country home was at nearby Summerville, now called Spring Hill, a suburb of Mobile.
The four most important buildings in Mobile as detailed on the 1838 La Tourette map were:
1. City Hospital 1830 - Thomas S. James, architect
2. Barton Academy 1835-6 - Gallier & Dakin, architects
3. Presbyterian Church 1836 - Gallier & Dakin, architect
4. Mobile Hotel (1838-9) - Gallier & Dakin architects (burned in 1839 - one of the 2 largest hotels in the world at that time, comparable only to the Dakins' St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans)
Other historic structures in Mobile:
Christ Episcopal Church (1838) - possibly Dakin Brothers
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (cornerstone laid 1835, consecrated 1850) - architect Claude Beroujon. Said to be the 2nd oldest cathedral in the United States.
Photos below (l to r) Roberts townhouse built circa 1837, Mobile City Hospital built 1830, Church Street Grave Yard, Asenath A. Roberts' gravestone and DAR plaque on back, Emily Roberts' gravestone:
1833
February 3, 1833: Asenath
Alexander Roberts passed away. Daughter Laura wrote in her diary that her
mother had been in good health that morning and was dead 12 hours later from
cholera morbus. Mrs. Roberts was buried in the southwest corner
(back left) of the Roberts plot in the Church Street Cemetery,
Mobile, Alabama,
and appears to be the oldest grave in the family plot. Obituary
published in the Mobile Commercial Register & Patriot, 4 FEB 1833, page 2,
column 4.
July 2, 1833: Willis and Asenath's daughter Emily died at age 17.
She was buried next to her mother, second from left. Obituary
published in the Mobile Commercial Register & Patriot, 2 JUL 1833, page 2,
column 4. "Died this morning of consumption...age 15"
(sic). Interment listed in the Mobile Commercial Register & Patriot, 6
JUL 1833, page 2, column 5.
1834
Much of the material available about the Roberts
family is also associated with M. B. Lamar or contained within the Papers of
Mirabeau B. Lamar, such that a brief summary of Lamar's life needs to be
threaded in at this point. Mirabeau B. Lamar had married Tabitha Jordan in
1826 and resigned his position with Governor Troup to move to the new town of
Columbus, Georgia, where he founded the Columbus Enquirer
newspaper in 1828 and cared for his wife, who was ill with tuberculosis.
He was elected a state senator in 1829 and was up for reelection at the time of
Tabitha's death in 1830. With a motherless baby to care for, he
immediately withdrew from politics and mourned completely. He was further
devastated by the despondency of his brother, Judge Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar
(father of Supreme Court Justice L.Q.C. Lamar). Judge Lamar had presided
over the trial of a local Methodist minister charged with murdering his wife's
15-year-old sister. Unmoved by the minister's steadfast claim of
innocence, he sentenced the defendant to the gallows. Sometime later a
condemned murderer in Mississippi, cleansing his conscience before meeting the
his own execution, confessed to many crimes, including the murder of the minister's
sister-in-law. On July 4, 1834, Judge Lamar, inconsolable over the fact
that he had executed an innocent man, quietly stepped out the study door of his
home in Milledgeville and moved into the garden, where he ended his life with a
pistol. Mirabeau languished for many more months. Finally he decided
that a change of scenery was necessary to counter his melancholia, and arranged
to leave his daughter in his mother's care at Fairfield so that he could travel. Photos
(l to r): Plaques for Lamar in Columbus, Georgia; Monument at grave
of Tabitha Jordan Lamar, Linwood Cemetery, Columbus, Georgia; Lamar family home,
Fairfield Plantation, in Milledgeville, Georgia (razed in 1960s by Georgia
Power); Monument at grave of L.Q.C. Lamar in Memory Hill Cemetery,
Milledgeville, Georgia
1835
Jack C. Ramsay's Thunder Beyond the Brazos:
A Biography of Mirabeau B. Lamar (1985, Eakin
Press), page 26, citing Lamar's journal as quoted
in Philip Graham's article "Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar's First Trip to
Texas" (Southwest
Review, July 1939, Volume 21, Number 4, p. 37),
states that in mid-June 19, 1835, Lamar took a small steamboat, the LITTLE ROCK,
from Montgomery, AL, to Mobile. Lamar described Mobile as a town with "a
population of ten thousand souls," and
wrote, "A few years ago, I
found here a little dirty town...and now I behold a populous city, reared up as
if by magic, like one in a fairy land, with beauty unrivaled." On
visiting the cemetery, he wrote: "I never
pass by a graveyard without stopping to peruse those pathetic records of
bereaved friendship and affection.... I mourn afresh the loss of my own
sweet flower...to forget is guilt and not to weep is worse than
ingratitude." He visited nearby
Summerville (now Spring Hill), where he attended a meeting of the Franklin
Society. He commented that this was the "first
attempt to establish a literary and scientific institution in the place."
He was impressed that the society boasted a membership of 100 and
a library of 600 volumes. He loved literature and history. He was making
his way to Texas, on advice from his old neighbor James Walker Fannin, Jr., who
had been sending glowing reports about the new frontier. An 1838 newspaper
article cited Lamar's intention for going was to collect material to write a
history of Texas. (Source:
The Life and Poems of Mirabeau B. Lamar by Philip Graham, 1938, University of
North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, p. 32.)
His trip through Louisiana to Texas was long and arduous. At Natchitoches,
LA, he developed a fever and spent a miserable week in bed. Traveling from
house to house along the route, sojourning at some homes for days at a time, he would update his journal and nurse himself enough to continue the
journey. He finally arrived July 22 at Nacogdoches, Texas, where the
journal ends. Source:
Page 375 of Graham's article "Mirabeau Lamar's First Trip to Texas." (Southwest
Review, July 1939, Volume 21, Number 4, pp. 369-389),
quoting from a 68-page manuscript (p. 31) entitled "Journal of My
Travels," detailing Lamar's 1835 trip from Columbus, GA, to Nacogdoches, TX
(edited by Philip Graham himself). In
his 1938 book Life and Poems
of Mirabeau B. Lamar Philip
Graham quotes the above passage
on page 32 as: "Stopping at Cahawba only long enough to renew
memories of this theater of his first adventures, he arrived in Mobile to find
the little dirty town that he had known a few years before grown into a
'populous city, reared up as if by fairy magic, with beauty unrivalled and
wealth unbounded." On page. 317 he says the manuscript is
"now in the possession of Lamar's grandchildren (Houston, Texas)."
Note: Papers of Mirabeau
Buonaparte Lamar (Texas Archives, 1928) six volumes edited by Gulick, et
al., document no. 3357 is a 4-pp biography written in the 1850s.
As quoted in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly,
Vol. LXXXIV, No. 3, January 1891, Notes
and Documents: "Mirabeau B. Lamar's Texas Journal" (edited by
Nancy Boothe Parker), "I
left Nacogdoches Tuesday 28 July 1835 in company of a man named Frank Adams
living near San Philipe. I left in extremely bad health, coughing blood
& burning with the bilious fever."
His health gradually improved enough to travel on to San Felipe to
complete details necessary to become a citizen and landowner of Texas, where he
met Stephen F. Austin, who was returning from Mexico with talk of an inevitable
showdown with Santa Anna's government. He met Jane Long, who ran a
boarding house, and contributed to building a fort at Velasco. In October
his brother wrote a letter begging for communication from Lamar, a negligent
correspondent. Lamar then turned back toward Georgia to settle his affairs
over Christmas before returning to his new life in Texas. See
the Handbook of Texas for a concise biography of Mirabeau B. Lamar by biographer Herbert
Gambrell.
Note: Herbert P. Gambrell's 1934 book states at page 59 that Lamar was in Mobile the end of November 1835. "At Mobile, Lamar's old friend, Dr. Roberts, founder of the Mobile Chronicle, invited him to join in the editorship of the paper." Lamar declined, saying, "I cannot accept. Texas is on the eve of a dreadful revolution . . . and I feel it my duty to mingle in that struggle." Santa Anna's army would soon threaten the rebel Texians at the Alamo and Goliad.
| 1836 Willis Roberts, Samuel Roberts, and Joel A. Roberts are each listed on the 1836 tax roll for Mobile, Alabama. Philip Graham's 1938 book, p. 35, cites an article printed in the Nacodoches Chronical, quoted by Telegraph and Texas Register June 23, 1838, which quoted "Lamar's reply to Willis Roberts when his old friend invited him to remain in Mobile to assist in editing The Mobile Chronicle." Graham describes that Lamar had returned to Georgia to settle affairs and by March 1836 was on his return trip to Texas: "Hurrying on to Mobile, he heard news which convinced him that 'Texas was on the eve of a dreadful revolution, with bigotry and despotism on one side and civil and religious liberty on the other.' " Lamar did not linger in Mobile, and arrived in time for the battle of San Jacinto, April 20, 1836. (Source: The Life and Poems of Mirabeau B. Lamar by Philip Graham, 1938, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.) |
 |
When Lamar reached
Texas, he wrote his brother in early April 1836: "A dreadful battle
is to be fought in three or four days on the Brazos, decisive of the fate of
Texas; I shall of course have to be in it. . . . Texas is in a dreadful
state of confusion. . . . Almost the whole of the Americans from Georgia
and Alabama have perished. The citizens of Texas are flying in every
direction. I shall reach [Sam] Houston day after tomorrow. In the
event of my falling in Battle, you will find my trunks, papers, etc. in the
possession of Mrs. Jane Long."
(Source: Lamar Papers, No. 351 (Vol. I, 350) See
further: The
Battle of San Jacinto.
April 27, 1836: Olivea Roberts became a widow again when Thomas L. Mather
died. His burial was the third in the Roberts plot in Mobile's Church
Street Graveyard, after Asenath and Emily Roberts.
THE QUARTERLY OF THE TEXAS STATE HISTORICAL
ASSOCIATION, Vol. XIII. OCTOBER, 1909. No. 2, reprints correspondence from A. M.
CLOPPER TO NICHOLAS CLOPPER., mentioning a Mrs. Mather visiting on p. 136 and a
Mr. Mather on p. 141 who "lives on chocolate" and apparently drowned
January 1837 trying to cross Willow Branch. Not sure what connection, if
any, exists.
1837
October 1837: Hero of the battle of San Jacinto, M. B. Lamar was now Vice
President of the Republic of Texas and public dinner parties were thrown in his
honor in Georgia and later Mobile, AL. Philip Graham states: "Here,
too, Lamar renewed his acquaintance with his old friends, the Roberts family, to
find that his former sweetheart, Olivia, had become a widow--she to whom he had
written 'Grieve Not, Sweet Flower.' The old love, smouldering since the
Cahawba days, leaped again into full flame in Olivia's breast, and for the rest
of her life she remained Lamar's ardent worshipper, willing to endure Texas
hardships and the forked tongues of frontier gossips to be near him. After
his departure for New Orleans, she wrote after him, hysterically pleading for
his return." It has been well documented that the Red River
route through Louisiana was infested with thieves and cutthroats. At this
time there surfaced a rumor that Lamar's enemies had set a trap for him along
this dangerous route. Historian Jack Ramsay notes: "He went
first to Mobile, and by October 14, he was on his way to the west. He
missed his boat at New Orleans and once more tarried there for a time.
While in the Louisiana city he received a letter in which there was a hint of
danger to his life: the rumor was that a gang of desperadoes employed by
his enemies was lurking in wait for him along the overland route. However,
Lamar did not take this seriously." (Source:
1985 Eakin Press: Thunder Beyond the Brazos, by Jack C. Ramsay, Jr.)
1837 City Directory:
Roberts & Hall, attorneys and counsellors at law, Royal b. Conti and
Government.
Roberts, Saml A., attorney and counsellor at law, firm of Roberts & Hall (located at 86 Royal
Street).
Roberts, W. Dr., c. Government and St.
Emanuel
1838 City Directory:
Dr. Willis Roberts' office was located on the north side of Government Street at
the corner of St. Emanuel Street.
Daniel E. Hall, Attorney, is listed alone at 86 Royal Street. Samuel
Alexander Roberts had moved to Texas.
Mobile Directory 1837 and 1839, arranged by Mrs. John H. Mallon
Roberts & Hall, attorneys and counsellors at law, Royal b. Conti and
Government.
Roberts, Saml A., attorney and counsellor at law, firm of Roberts & Hall
Roberts, W. Dr., c. Government and St.
Emanuel
|
Olivea's
letter to Lamar: Come back to us instantly, come back. I learned late last night that you had missed the boat for Texas and was still at the Lake House. Your death is talked of here as an event that must soon take place--they say you can not escape should you attempt the Red River route as we fear you will do.
I am so much alarmed that I have lost the powers--to think about it almost--and
can only repeat--come back--come at once and you will Yours--Affectionate friend Olivea.
|
(Source: Lamar Papers, Document No. 607; Papers of Mirabeau B. Lamar, Vol. I, page 575).
GALVESTON, TEXAS
1838
Land was plentiful in Texas and the new
republic needed the immigration of adventuresome settlers. Especially
wanted were wealthy planters from nearby slave states to populate and finance
the republic and who could bring labor to help settle the vast untamed land.
During this time many members of the
Roberts family also moved to Texas. Mirabeau
Lamar appointed Willis Roberts as Collector of Customs for the port city of
Galveston from December 1838 to December 1839. Daughter Olivea lived with
her father in Galveston and frequently visited Lamar at the capital in Houston.
As Vice President and then President, Lamar also appointed Willis' sons to
several different offices. Reuben and Joel Roberts became postmasters.
Records in the Texas Archives reveal that
Willis' appointment at Galveston had caused some local resentment. Gail Borden, Jr.,
later the successful inventor of condensed milk, served as the Port of Galveston Customs Collector from
1837 to December 1838, when Lamar removed him and appointed Roberts to the
office. More
trouble surfaced later after subordinates mismanaged funds, for which Willis
admirably offered his own property as collateral until the matter could be
straightened out.
He was succeeded by
Alden A. M. Jackson as customs collector in December 1839.
(Handbook
of Texas.)
Unlike Sam Houston's administration in his first term as
President, which attempted to pacify the Indian tribes and kept an eye toward
annexation with the United States, Lamar's administration had tired of recurring
Indian and Mexican raids and faced the realization that the U.S. did not want to
annex Texas, as northern states would not accept entry of another slave state.
So Lamar's term as President was spent laying the foundation for a country that
would hopefully expand to California, and much time was spent trying to gain
diplomatic recognition of the republic by England and France and in setting up
trade and attempting to secure a loan to keep the government afloat.
Samuel Alexander Roberts made several diplomatic trips to Washington, D.C., and
Europe before becoming Secretary of State in 1841. Lamar's detractors
criticized him for Texas' debt and speculated endlessly about his relationship
with Olivea Mather, frequently seen in his company and referred to in the
newspapers as "the pretty widow." The foreign loan
never materialized and the country was nearly bankrupt. An expedition to
annex Santa Fe was a fiasco.
So when Lamar's term ended in 1842, he
settled into his plantation at Washington on the Brazos, near Richmond, Texas,
derided as a dreamer and a failure by the re-elected Sam Houston. Lamar's
personality was at odds with Houston's: Lamar was a refined gentleman,
Houston a self-promoting frontiersman. Obviously Houston felt that Lamar
was a threat to his place in history and took every opportunity to demean his
efforts. Lamar's friends were loyal and his integrity and sincerity had
never been questioned, but it would be many years later before historians would
restore his reputation. His accomplishments had been that he selected
Austin as the Texas capital; succeeded in gaining diplomatic recognition by
France, Great Britain, and the Republic of Yucatan; and the historical material
he collected and preserved was the foundation of the magnificent Texas archives.
The groundwork he laid down in setting aside land for schools made him known as
the Father of Education in Texas. This line from one of his speeches is
often quoted: "The cultivated mind is the guardian genius of
Democracy." Texas did not itself reach the Pacific, but it became a
great state and was an important acquisition for the U.S. in its goal of
manifest destiny.
After Willis Roberts returned to Mobile, some of his
children chose to remain. On
Friday, April 8, 1842, Samuel Alexander Roberts married the
widow Lucinda Mary Reed (nee Gary) in Fayette County, Texas, and moved to
Bonham, Texas. There in Fannin County they built a large house called Three Groves.
It was built of logs and covered with siding of planed lumber hauled from
Jefferson, Texas. His land holdings exceeded 5,000 acres and
extended into surrounding counties. As an attorney, Samuel A. Roberts
tried cases in the new courthouse at Fannin County, even trying a case against
his attorney brother-in-law, P. J. Pillans, and in 1861 documents he was referred
to as "Judge Roberts." The National Archives contains some of
his correspondence with Jefferson Davis. Laura Roberts Pillans bore
several children to Palmer Job Pillans at Bonham and in 1849 headed farther
west, staying in Santa Fe, New Mexico, until 1853, when they returned to Mobile.
(Sources: Papers of Mirabeau B.
Lamar, Handbook of Texas, Papers of Sam Houston, Frontier Times Magazine,
unpublished Memoir of Palmer Job Pillans.)
Galveston new Customs House built soon after Willis Roberts' return to Alabama |
|
|
MOBILE, ALABAMA
1853
Willis Roberts died the year of
one of Mobile's most horrendous yellow fever epidemics, on December 23, 1853. Below: Roberts family plot in Church Street Cemetery, Mobile, Alabama.
2004 Note: Recent cemetery vandalism has been
brought to attention of authorities. The only noticeable change in the
Willis Roberts plot between June and December 2003 was someone had slid
the lid of Willis Robert's crypt counterclockwise several inches, revealing a
small opening at upper right, which may be visible in this
photo.
1859
On 19 DEC 1859, as the Lamar
family prepared for the arrival of Christmas guests at their plantation in
Richmond, TX, Former President Mirabeau B. Lamar was seized by a heart
attack and collapsed on his bedroom floor, dead at age 61. He left a
widow, Henrietta Maffitt, and one young daughter, Loretto Evalina Lamar. Burial:
Morton Cemetery, Richmond, Texas.
Eleanor Colson's genealogy of the Lamar family, including photos and
gravesites are here.
Descendants of Willis Roberts & Asenath Alexander:
1.
Olivea Alexander Roberts
(23 Jun 1804-1 Sep 1882) born in Putnam Co., GA, d. in LA.
Beautiful elder daughter of Willis Roberts and Asenath Alexander Roberts.
Frequently written as "Olivia." Buried in Trinity Episcopal
Cemetery, beside Trinity
Episcopal Church, Cheneyville, LA (Rapides Parish),
left side of church, near these graves:
Kilpatrick, Andrew Milton - 16 Jul 1829/25 Aug
1895 - Father
Mather, Olivea A. R. - 1804/1 Sep 1882
Womack, Nellie E. - 12 Aug 1880/2 Dec 1882 [under large tree]
- Daughter of T. A. & A. E. Womack
|
|
|
Married
four times:
1.
John
Taylor (1779?-BEF
1827) m. 20 JAN 1821(1) in Dallas County, AL(2), the bride age 16-17.
Pillans family
records say m. 20 Jan 1820.
Their child: (m)
Dr. Francis Walsingham Taylor/Mather
b. 1 Jan 1822 (in GA(3)) (or b. 1829(4)), adopted
by stepfather Thomas Mather. Killed by stepfather A. S.
Withers in New Orleans, buried
in Willis Roberts' plot, Church Street Cemetery, Mobile, AL. The Daily Picayune of New Orleans had a lengthy article on the front page, 1
JUNE 1861, column 7, regarding Dr. Francis W. Mather being shot by his
step-father, A. S. Withers, "on Wednesday last and died the next
morning." Tombstone reads date of death 6 JUN 1861.
(Note:
copies of murder articles available to close family only.)
2.
Thomas L. Mather
(1798-27 APR 1836 (or 1845?))
m. 12 SEP 1827 (Mobile, AL marriage license, book 0/231), bride's age 22-23. (Pillans
family records say m. 11-12, 1827)
Adopted Francis Walsingham Taylor. 1830 Mobile Census: owned 9 slaves
Buried in
Willis Roberts' plot, Church Street Cem. Mobile, AL. Published
transcriptions lists these graves:
Mather, Dr. F.W., d.1861 age 39
Mather, Thomas d.1856 age 38 (should read 1836, although raised tomb is similar
to Willis Roberts' 1853 tomb)
|
Thomas Mather's tombstone
reads: |
|
|
 Mobile newspaper, June 1, 1861 |
Note
the order of the graves. It appears the plot was filled back to front,
left to right, in order of death, a common practice at the time. First, at
rear left is Asenath (1833); second, daughter Emily (a few months later); third,
Thomas Mather's raised tomb (1836); fourth, far right is an illegibly-marked
infant's grave; front left is unmarked; second from left is Willis Roberts'
raised tomb (1856); third is unmarked; fourth is Dr. Francis Walsingham Mather
(1861); fifth is an illegibly marked infant's grave.
3. Edwin M. McKinstry (b. 1804, d. 1863) m. 1 MAY 1841 (Mobile, AL marriage license, book 4/14 & 5/128), bride and groom age 36-37. Pillans family records say m. May 10, 1841.
4. Abraham S. Withers (b. 1817(3) or 1808(2) d. 1895) m. 8 FEB 1851 per New Orleans Daily Picayune of 9 FEB 1851, p2/c5, bride age 46-47.
Son of Olivea A. Roberts Taylor Mather:
(See Census Transcriptions)
(m)
Dr. Francis Walsingham TAYLOR/MATHER (1822-1861) (b. in GA(3)) (or b.
1829(4)), adopted
by stepfather Thomas Mather, killed in 1861* by stepfather A. S.
Withers in New Orleans, buried
in Willis Roberts' plot, Church Street Cemetery, Mobile, AL. *Date
from tombstone is 6 JUN 1861, New Orleans & Mobile newspapers state funeral
was 1 June 1861.
F. W. Mather married 1st: Martha Modest Kennedy on 4 JAN 1855 in Mobile, AL
(7 JAN 1855 New Orleans Daily Picayune,
page 4, column 4). The marriage license
was prepared 3 JAN 1855 (Mobile Co. Probate Court Book 13, page 434.)
The wedding was held "at the residence of Mrs. Hall" (Trinity Episcopal
Church, Mobile, Alabama, History, Baptisms and Marriage Records
1845-1915). Martha M. Kennedy
(1816-1888) was daughter of
William Ebenezer Kennedy (b. ABT. 1769 in Philadelphia, Philadelphia Co.,
PA) and Martha E. D'Olive (b. 1790).
Martha's sister
was Delphine Euphrosine Kennedy, who married
1. in 1840 to attorney Daniel Emerson Hall (1810-1852), who had come from
Massachusetts as an accountant and became a law partner of Samuel Alexander
Roberts (the Hall house still stands at the n.e. corner Emmanuel and Monroe
St. near Fort Conde);
2. Danville Leadbetter (1811-1866), from Maine, a civil engineer in
Mobile, and moved to North Carolina after the Civil War.
Martha M. Kennedy petitioned for divorce and it was granted by the Fourth
District Court of New Orleans. On 13 Jan 1859 Martha Mather petitioned the
probate court of Mobile to restore her maiden name; the petition was granted. She
died childless.
Martha and Delphine Kennedy were first cousins of Joshua Kennedy, Jr.
(1828-1862), who on 17 MAR 1853
married Mary Emmanuel and by 1857 built the Kennedy
mansion at 607 Government Street, Mobile, corner of Govt. & Dearborn
St. Their daughter Isabella (2 OCT 1854-) inherited this
property. Local tradition repeated by John McGehee says widow
Mary Emanuel Kennedy traded this house for her sister Virginia Mitchell's
interest in the family home Emmanuel House, 251 Government Street, Mobile.
F. W. Mather married 2nd: Grace
sometime between 1855-1858? (born 1841 in Tennessee, parents from Virginia
(6))
Children of Francis Walsingham Mather and Grace:
*(m)
Francis Walsingham Mather b.1858 LA (1870 Tangipahoa parish, LA, census age 12)
(m) Withers
Mather (b.
3/1860) LA (age 4 months on the 12 JUL 1860 New Orleans census, page 304)
(m)
Frank Mather b. 1860 LA (1870 Tangipahoa Parish, LA, census age 10) (same son as
above? F. W. Mather?)
(m)
Irwin Mather b.1862 LA (1880 New Orleans census age 18)
*Francis Walsingham Mather (b. 1858, d.
before
1940) married Mary Ellen Cheney (23 Oct. 1859-after 1930) on 14 May 1883 at Trinity Episcopal Church,
Cheneyville, Louisiana, eight and a half months after
his grandmother Olivea was laid to rest there. Mary Ellen was the daughter
of Ellen Judith Wright and Oscar Bailey Cheney. F. W. Mather and M.
E. (Cheney) Mather's children were:
1. Olivia Alexander Mather (22 Feb. 1884-Jan. 1975) m. 16 Jan. 1924
(age 39) to A. R. Lacey
2. Oscar Cheney Mather (26 Aug. 1886-Nov. 1970) unmarried by 1931, age 45
3. Gertrude Ellen Mather (23 Jan. 1889-15 Jan. 1970) unmarried by 1931, age
42
4. Victor Tessier Mather (12 Feb. 1895-9 Nov. 1966) married 21
July 1923 (age 28)
to Eleanor Smitherman
5. Irvine Francis Mather (2 Dec. 1897-Mar 1986) unmarried by 1931, age 34.
Died in Hattiesburg, Forrest Co., MS.
Census
Notes:
1860
New Orleans census, page 165, dated 21 JUN 1860, shows Abraham
Withers and Olivia as married; page 304 shows Francis
W. Mather has a son named Withers Mather.
1870 Tangipahoa Parish, LA census lists "Olivia Mather," a widow, head
of household, with her daughter-in-law Grace and
grandsons Walsingham, age 12, Frank, age 10.
1880 New Orleans
census lists Grace Mather as head of household, with son Irwin, age 18, and
mother-in-law Olivia Mather. Also living with them was a 32-year-old Brit named
William H. Goodfellow, a store clerk.
1890 & 1891 city directories show Wm
H. Goodfellow boarding at 184 Julia and clerking at A. Baldwin & Co.
1920 City of New Orleans census,
Mary Ellen (Cheney) Mather is 60 years old and head of her household, with both
unmarried daughters present. 34-year-old Oscar is gone from
household as well as 25-year-old Victor T., who is unmarried and seen
working as a laborer in a Louisiana oilfield in Claiborne County.
22-year-old Irivine is a clerical worker living at home. Also
in the household is 79-year-old mother-in-law Grace Mather.
In 1951 Mrs. Almarine R. Lacey of
Shreveport, Louisiana, donated a memoir of her cousin Otway B. Norvell to the Southern Historical Collection at the University
of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill, NC. Ms. Lacey was a descendant
of Olivea Alexander Roberts, whose grandson Francis Walsingham Mather married
Mary Ellen Cheney. Mrs. A. R. Lacey was probably their daughter, Olivia Alexander
Mather,
who was about 67 years old in 1951. Otway Norvell was the son-in-law of Laura (Roberts)
Pillans. A 1950 paper on the Wooten family by Beth (Condo) Miller cited
"data from Mrs. Almarine R. Lacey, Shreveport, Louisiana." The
1917-1918 draft registration cards for Yazoo Co., MS, list Almarine Royster
Lacey, born 7 May 1878, white, "works in New Orleans," when he would
have been about 39. He would have married
Olivia Mather at age 35.
Footnotes: (1)per records in
Dallas County, AL (Book D, page 026) and marriage records
compiled by Marie Whaley McLaughlin and Carolyn Ward Vintson published by
Prestige Research and Publishing, in the records of Linda Derry, (2)per Decody
Marble, though he says 1820, as do Pillans family records (3)per LDS & per 1860 census, (4)per descendants'
records, (5)per 1880 census
Census notes: Continual "fudging" of birthdates on a sliding
scale, such that by 1870 Olivea was 50 years of age; when living under her
daughter-in-law's care 10 years later, the census taker wrote the
mother-in-law's age as 75, which is consistent with her gravestone.
2.
Mary Herndon Roberts
(b. 2 Oct 1806, d. 2 AUG 1822 in Cahawba,
AL, aged 15) The Cahawba Press dated 3 AUG 1822, transcription in
the records of Linda Derry: "Departed this life on Friday morning the
2d inst. at 10 o'clock, after a tedious illness, MISS MARY H. ROBERTS, in the
15th year of her age, daughter of WILLIS ROBERTS, ESQ. Merchant of this
place."
3.
Col. Samuel Alexander
Roberts
(13 Feb 1809 -18 Aug 1872) Born in Putnam Co, GA, died in Bonham, TX).
Attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY (1824-1826), in
Jefferson Davis' class, where he was involved in the so-called Eggnog Riot.
Robert E. Lee was an underclassman at the time. Roberts received his law
degree in approximately 1837, before moving to Houston and later Austin,
TX. Mirabeau Lamar appointed him Secretary of State of the Republic of
Texas 1841-42. On Friday, 8 APR 1842 he
married (in Fayette Co., TX) to the widowed Lucinda Mary Reed (nee Gary) and moved to Bonham, Fannin
County, TX; accrued real estate valued at $3,000 and three slaves by 1850.
They built a large log house known as Three Groves, covered with siding of
planed lumber
hauled from Jefferson, TX, recognized as a showplace. By
1860 he owned about 5,000 acres, stretching into nearby Collin County.
For further information, see the excellent
comprehensive bio by Prof. Brian Hart in Handbook
of Texas states that his family included
four children, a stepson (Sylvanus Reed) and two foster daughters (Adda Greene
and Belle Hunt). Sometimes referred to
as "Alexander" in
letters from his father now in the collection of Papers
of Mirabeau B. Lamar and also in
Graham's Life and Poems of Mirabeau B.
Lamar. As
an attorney, Samuel A. Roberts tried cases in the new Fannin County Court House,
including a case with his attorney brother-in-law P. J. Pillans on the other
side. He
was a delegate to two Whig conventions, the political party against secession,
and also a member of a group attempting to curb abolitionist propaganda in the
M. E. Church, during which time (1861) documents referred to him as "Judge
Roberts." The National Archives contains some of his correspondence
with Jefferson Davis. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Davis appointed
him Assistant
Adjutant-General of the C. S. Provisional Army. He attempted to raise a brigade but
managed to raise only three companies. Thereafter, under Gen. Magruder, he
was colonel of the 14th Brigade,
TX State Troops, which later became part of the 34th Cavalry/2nd TX Squadron.
Three of four children died young. His wife Lucinda M. Reed died in 1865. He followed seven years
later. Burial was listed in
Floy Hodge's 1960s cemetery book as Inglish Cemetery, Bonham, TX, on
Pecan Street, near V.A. Hospital, in a plot with his wife and son. Markers
are now missing,
but graves may be near the still-marked grave of daughter Mary E. Roberts
Anthony. Her inlaws, James M. Anthony and Sarah Payne Anthony,
are marked as well.
Wife Lucinda
Mary (Gary) Reed (NY
1818-1865) Inglish
Cemetery, Bonham, TX. Frequently referred to as "Mary."
Child of Mr. Reed and Lucinda Mary (Gary) Reed:
Sylvanus Reed
(b. 1832, Missouri)
1850 Bonham, TX, Fannin Co., census, 1860 Wise Co. census, 1880 Fannin Co.
census
wife:
Emma. Children: Mary (b. 1866?), Frank (b. 1867?), Clarence (b. Feb.
1870)
Children of Samuel Alexander Roberts and Lucinda Mary Reed: (Census
Records)
Florence Asenath Roberts
(b. 12 May 1843) died young
Samuel
Alexander Roberts, Jr.
(13 Feb 1845-1851) Inglish Cemetery, Bonham, TX,
1850 census, died young
Clarence Roberts (born
7 Dec 1846) died young
Mary E. Roberts
daughter
(26 Jan1849-16 Jul1887), Inglish Cemetery,
Bonham, TX, all censuses 1850-1880
married Joseph Francis Anthony & had one son: Harry Anthony (see
below)
|
Adda Greene foster daughter
(b. 1845)
on 1860 census Bonham, TX, census Belle Hunt (b. 1857-24 Nov 1893) foster daughter taken in by Roberts. After the death of her parents (Catherine Cordelle Hunt in 1863 and William Hunt in 1865), she and her siblings were brought from Cactus Hill Ranch in Wise Co., Tx., to Fannin Co., Tx, and raised by Sylvanus Reed. She married Samuel A. Shortridge, became a celebrated author, died in Wise Co., TX. There are also Hunt and Shortridge graves in Fannin County. |
 Belle (Hunt) Shortridge |
2003 note - Prof. Brian Hart tells me he doesn't
remember any research other than what is cited in his Texas Handbook bio.
He states that Samuel Alexander Roberts' family "included four children, a
stepson, and two foster daughters." S. Reed appears to have been a
stepson, and Adda Greene appears to have been a foster daughter. The 1870 census for the Town of Bonham, TX, 21 SEP
1870, lists Samuel Alexander Roberts living on same property in same household
with daughter Mary and a mulatto cook with three mulatto children: p. 160A &
B, Prect. no. 1, Dwelling No. 9/Family No. 9: Amanda Wilson (age 23, mulatto,
Cook) and her children Walter(6), Gus(4), Clifton(2), Roberts, Samuel A.(61),
Mary (21). Note that the area mail
carrier was a Wilson during this time, and also a Grace Wilson is listed in
Bonham school records c. 1890.)
2005
note - In 1935 Gladys Anthony wrote that her
great-grandfather S. A. Roberts had a coachman named Morgan (purchased for $800)
and a cook named Polly. She wrote that both servants remained with
him at the house called Three Groves after the Civil War and until his death. She
also mentioned author Belle Hunt's novel "Held in Trust," about an
orphan girl who, after her parents were killed by Indians, went to live at Three
Groves. The old house was well maintained as late as 1935 on the edge of
the Bonham High School property, West 12th at Main Street, Bonham, TX.
Mary E. ROBERTS
(26 Jan.1849-16 Jul1887), Inglish Cemetery,
Bonham, TX, all censuses 1850-1880, on Thursday, 18 April, 1872, she married
Joseph
Francis ANTHONY (1 Mar 1850-1924).
Her father died four months later. The following year their son was born:
Harry
Roberts ANTHONY (1873-1917)
Souvenir
of Texas p. 32 says Mary R. Roberts instead of Mary E. Roberts. Mary
E. R. Anthony is listed in Inglish
Cemetery transcription with her inlaws:
Anthony, James M. 10 Dec.1817-8 Oct.1875
Anthony, Mary R. 26 Jan.1849-16 Jul.1887
Anthony, "Mammy" Sarah Payne 1833-1922 Wife of J. M. Anthony
Joseph
F. ANTHONY (1 Mar 1850-1924) (gravestone
says 1851-1924) Burial: Woodmen
Cemetery, Ravenna, TX. Wednesday, 12 Sep 1888 he remarried
in Ravenna, TX.
J.
F. Anthony's wife #2:
Emma E. YERION
(1867-1927) daughter of Dr.
Joseph R. Yerion. Burial: Woodmen Cemetery, Ravenna TX
Joseph Anthony's
brother George married Emma YERION's sister Adelia. Joseph &
Mary's son Harry later married the younger Yerion sister, Lilla
(sometimes seen as Lilly/Lillian).
Joseph &
Emma's son Baby Joe ANTHONY(30
Mar 1898-12 Sep 1899)Woodmen Cemetery,
Ravenna, TX (above).
Harry
Roberts ANTHONY (11
Mar
1873-5 Nov 1917)
(son
of Mary & Joseph).
Mother Mary Roberts Anthony died when he was age 14. When Harry was 16 his
father then married Emma E. Yerion.
Harry married Thursday, 29 DEC 1892 in Bonham, TX, to Lilla May YERION (b. NOV 1873).
See:
Souvenir of TX p. 934.
Both are buried
with daughter Gladys in section H, lot 251, Willow Wild Cemetery, Bonham, TX.
Harry
& Lilla Anthony's daughters:
Gladys
Roberts ANTHONY
(Nov 1893-5 Oct 1948)
a teacher. In
2003 an elderly librarian recalled that Gladys had never married.
Laudys
L. ANTHONY (b.
14 Nov
1897-8 Aug 1971). Her own father, Harry Anthony, enumerator of the 1900
census, spelled her name Laudes. Married on 15 May 1926 in Bonham, TX, to Henry Beauford "Boots"
Taliaferro, Sr., moved briefly to Fort Worth,
TX, then spent the remainder of their lives in Oklahoma City. They
are both buried there in Rose Hill Cemetery.
Their only son,
Henry Beauford
"Boots" Taliaferro, Jr. (12
Jan 1932 - 4 Aug 2004)
married 23 Nov 1955 in Okalahoma City, OK, to
1. JANET Myers (living) and had three children. Author Janet
Taliaferro's novel A Sky
for Arcadia was an Oklahoma Book Award finalist
1. Living de Leon, of Virginia, has one son
2. Living Taliaferro, of California, has two daughters
3. Living Taliaferro, of Virginia, has two children
H. B. Taliaferro next married:
2. LIVING Shoemaker (married May 16, 1987), Oklahoma
two-stepchildren and five step-grandchildren
4.
Joel Abbot Roberts
(DOB 6 Jan 1811* in Putnam County, GA; DOD 7 Aug 1863.
*Pillans
family records; some researchers say b. 1 Jan and 2 Jan 1813. Married 17
Feb 1840 (Mobile,
AL license, book 4/356 & 5/12) to Mary Taylor Bolles
(b. 30 Nov 1820, d. 17 Feb 1882, not listed in 1883
directory), daughter of Eber M. Bolles and Elizabeth (Taylor) Bolles. (Genealogy
of the Bolles Family in America (Boston: Henry W.
Dutton Son, 1865; Mobile Co. Death Records) (
Notes of great granddaughter Ruthie Hunter Wolfe-Castleberry lists Mary's birth
as 20 Nov 1820 and death as Mar 1882.)
Joel was a banker, with the firm of Lewis and
Porteous, 36 Dauphin Street, Mobile,
AL.
1850 - Joel A. Roberts spent a
brief time in Texas as postmaster for the town of White Rock, in
Dallas County,
Texas,
from 22 Feb 1850 until the post was discontinued 25 Apr 1851
Mobile City Directories:
1838 - ( clerk, listed at 35 Commerce Street)
1842 - ( listed at 31 Dauphin)
1844 - Roberts Joel A, clerk State Bank, r n w c joachim and church
(near 108 S. Joachim, where son Willis lived 1907-1908)
1855-6 - Roberts Joel A, firm Lewis & Porteus, res government, n'r broad
1859 - Roberts, Joel A, firm Lewis & Porteus, res ns government w broad
1866 - Roberts, Mary T, mrs, res ns govt w broad
1867 (four years after his death) - Roberts, Joel A, sec deposit bank, ns govt,
w broad
1870 - Roberts Mary, widow Joel, res ns Government bet Hallett and Broad
1873 - Roberts Mary T. wid Joel, res ns Government 5 w Broad
1874 - Roberts Mary T. wid Joel, res ns Government 5 w Broad
1875 - Roberts Mary T. wid Joel, res ns Government 5 w Broad
1876 - Roberts Mary T. wid Joel, res ns Government 5 w Broad
1877 - Roberts Mary T. wid Joel, res ns Government 5 w Broad
1878 - Roberts Mary T. wid Joel, res ns Government 4 w Broad
1879 - Roberts Mary T. wid Joel A. res ns Government 5 w Broad
1880 - Roberts Mary T. wid Joel A. res ns Government 5 w Broad
1881 - Roberts Mary J. wid Joel A. res ns Government 5 w Broad (sic)
1882 - Roberts Mary T. wid Joel A. res ns Government 5 w Broad
1883 - Roberts Mary T. not listed
(died 17 Feb 1882)
Children:
1. (f) Laura Douglas Roberts
(1841-1926)
married Joseph Theophilus Hunter, Jr. of
North Carolina
2. (m) Willis Roberts
(b.1843)
married the widow Moffitt
Eliza (Peacock) Taylor (see Peacock Family)
3. (m) Eber Bolles Roberts (b. 1846, buried 17 JUN 1860, Mobile death
certificate #521)
4. (m)
Walsingham M. Roberts (18 NOV 1847 -
31 DEC 1916) married 22 Feb 1895 to Evelyn Gaines Russell (Mobile County book 33, page
784). She divorced him in 1899, case
#06484. .
5. (f) Mary C. "Mollie" Roberts
(26 NOV 1849-15 NOV 1933)
twin, married Walter Pearce Taylor (d.
28 SEP 1883)
6. (m)
Lamar Roberts - (26 NOV 1849) - twin, 1850 census says 2 months old. Not on 1860 census.
Died
at 16 months old? Burial: Church
Street Cemetery? Mobile County
Health Department Burial Records: Roberts, son of Joel A., 15 MAR 1851 w.
7. (f) Virginia H.
"Jennie" Roberts (1 JUL 1852 - 4 JAN 1928) married
George Eberlein(20 OCT 1848-10
MAR 1919)
8. (m) Alexander
Roberts - youngest child listed for Joel
& Mary Roberts in the Bolles genealogy published in 1865. Not in the 1870
census.
9. (f) Bessie Roberts (14 Feb 1862-1941) married 3 June 1896
to William Richard Turman, Jr. (1 Nov 1864-19 Jan 1918).
Burial
Records of Mobile County 1820-1856 by Mitchell & Moffett
Roberts, Infant of
J. 8 MAR 1844 w
Roberts, Joel H.(?) 16 NOV 1863 w (death certificate #1535) (Different?
Re-interred?)
|
|
Townhouse of Joel A. Roberts, Mobile,
Alabama |
|
Land Patents
|
Patentee: JOEL A. ROBERTS |
County:
Dallas County, TEXAS Abstract Number: 1224 District/Class: Nacogdoches 3rd File Number: 2939 1/2 Original Grantee: Joel Roberts Patentee: Joel Roberts Title Date: Patent Date: 11 Apr 1855 Patent No: 1262 Patent Vol: 11 Certificate: 29 Part Section: Survey/Blk/Tsp: Adj County: Acres: 640.00 |
Other
Texas land patents click here
Resting place
of JOEL ABBOT ROBERTS: Augusta,
GA, Magnolia Cemetery, Confederate section. Cemetery records
state: #A403: "Roberts, Joel A. G., buried
8-9-1863; Native of Mobile, Alabama; Planter; 4 day resident of Augusta; Died of
Heart Spasms; 36 (sic) years old; Male; Died at 3rd Ward; Buried Southeast-New
Yard." The
cemetery entrance is shown in the first photograph above, 702 Third Street (not to be confused with the street
names inside the cemetery itself). April 25, 2004 Jack F. Key,
Operations Manager, wrote: "In 1863 the New Yard would be between
Second Street and Third Street, between Del 'Argle Ave. & West Wall
Avenue." The lanes between the sections are well marked. The
very southeast corner is shown in the second photograph above at the pole, with Wall Street connecting
3rd street (not visible connecting at left in the foreground) to 2nd St. in distance,
intersecting from left near large tree, where vehicle is parked.
Immediately to the right of Wall Street, which runs through the photograph
above, is the cemetery wall, visible in the third photograph. Great
granddaughter Ruthie H. (Wolfe) Castleberry wrote that he had been
moved to Mobile's Magnolia Cemetery and on back row of the plot with his wife
Mary, "headstones sunk"
 |
Many unmarked graves in this section, due to ongoing Civil War. Some plots marked only along plot coping, such as the Moffett plot. |
Children of Joel A. Roberts and Mary Taylor Bolles
Roberts: (Census
Records)
1.
(f)
Laura Douglas Roberts
(b. Oct 1841 in
Alabama) (named
after Joel's sister who lived two doors down) "There's
Laura with her footsteps light,
Five Children:
1. (m) Joel Hunter (b. Sep
1867 in Alabama, died March 6, 1928 in Miami, Florida) Married June 4, 1896, in
the First Church (Methodist) in Atlanta to Lethe Bizzell (b. Dec 1874 in Alabama).
In 1900 they
lived in Baltimore, Md; by 1910 in Atlanta, GA. again.
(f) Lethe Bizzell Hunter (b. July 1897 in South Carolina, d. Feb. 1916 in
Georgia, buried Westview Cem., Atlanta)
(m) Joel Hunter, Jr. (b. 1906 in Georgia, d. 5 Jan 2000)
(m) William Theophilus Hunter (b. 1909 in Georgia, d. 1963)
(f) Elizabeth Hunter (b. 1913 in Georgia, d. 2003)
Joel Hunter, Jr., (b. 1906) was an
accountant with the firm of Haskins & Sells. An article in 1955 in the
Journal of Accountancy quoted him as an expert in
his field and, when reprinted in 1995, stated he was the president of the
Crucible Steel Company of America. He was president in 1957 and chairman
in 1968. Crucible Steel was located in Oakdale, Pennsylvania and is now
named Crucible Specialty Metals.
Elizabeth Hunter married Ferdinand Gordon Morrill (d. 2000). They
maintained homes in Florence, Italy; Massachusetts; and Florida.
2. (m) Frank
Ross Hunter
(b. August 1872 in Alabama, d. 1949)
Sometimes called Frank R., other times called Ross. The June 1900 census
shows him as a "city
salesman-groceries," living with his mother in Bessie Roberts' rented
Atlanta house. In 1920 Ross Hunter (born in Alabama the same year, whose father was born in North Carolina and mother born in
Alabama) is shown married to Ethel F. (b. 1883 in Georgia) and living in
Essex Co., East Orange, New Jersey. Their daughter was
(f) Ethel F. Hunter (b. 1906 in Georgia) Ross married Ethel Farmer
(1883-1969). Their daughter, Ethel, married William F. Ogden
3.
(f)
Carrie B. Hunter (b. May 1875 d. 3/28/1876) Magnolia
Cemetery, Mobile, AL records show her in Square 6, lot 80, with the information
"daughter of Joseph T. & Laura D. Hunter, age 10 months). Per
notes of Ruth Hunter (Wolfe) Castleberry, she is buried
in the plot of her aunt Mary C. "Mollie" Roberts' inlaws, Bacon Reese
Taylor and Virginia Clarico Taylor, Square 5, Lot 101, Magnolia Cemetery. No
marker.
4. (m)
John Punch Hunter (b.
July 1877, d. 11/27/1878) Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, AL records show
him in Square 6, lot 80, with the information "age 1 yr 4 mos."
5. (f)
Bessie
Hunter (b. August 1882 in
Alabama; died 1909). As a teen she moved to Atlanta before
1900 and lived with her mother in Bessie Roberts' house. Married
Wednesday, October 12, 1904, to Edgar Simmons Harrison (b. January 1877 in
Florida). The wedding was reported in The Georgia Enterprise
on Friday, Oct. 14, 1904:
"Hunter-Harrison
"A pretty wedding on Wednesday was that of Miss Bessie Hunter and Mr. Edgar
Simmons Harrison, which occurred at the home of the bride's brother, Mr. Joel
Hunter on North Jackson St., Atlanta. Dr. Bridewell
performed the ceremony and the only attendants were Miss Helen Crew
and Miss Bessie Baxter, Mr. Edward Stephenson and Mr. A. B. Simms. The
Bride was lovely in a gown of white crepe de chine, her bouquet of brides
roses, her bridesmaids were also gowned in white and carried white flowers.
In the drawing room where the ceremony took place, everything was in white
flowers forming the decorations and throughout the rest of the house leaves
and cosmos were attractively utilized. Clarkes orchestra
furnished the music and a buffet breakfast was served during
the brief reception before the departure of Mr. Harrison and his bride for
Covington."
In 1900 Edgar was 23 years old when he
served in the
military in Cuba. Bessie died between 1907-1910. In 1910 Edgar's mother-in-law,
Laura, had three lodgers in her rented boarding house where Edgar lived with his
three-year-old motherless daughter. By
1920 Edgar was head of the boarding house and had remarried to a Leola (b. 1882
in Alabama). His former mother-in-law, Laura Roberts Hunter continued to
live with them.
(f) Laura Harrison (b. 1907)
2. (m) Willis Roberts
(1843-1918) (named after Joel's father, Dr. Willis
Roberts) Mentioned in the 1857 poem by M. B. Lamar: "there's
Willis with his flying kite." Per Mobile, AL license,
9 Feb1870, book 24/255, he
married the widow Moffitt
Eliza (Peacock) Taylor
(1839-1921).
Eberlein family list said Willis "married Widow Moffitt."
Several genealogists show her as E. Taylor Moffett or Widow Moffett.
("Alexander-Roberts-Eberlein" booklet).
Willis lived
at home on Government Street until married.
Moffitt Elizabeth Peacock, daughter of Michael and Mary Elizabeth Peacock, was
born February
1839 at the Moses Garrison/Michael Peacock plantation in Montgomery,
Alabama. Montgomery
County marriage
records show Moffett E. Peacock married Wm. S. Taylor 15 Feb. 1855, when she
would have been 16 years old. His relationship to Henry Bright Taylor is
unclear. Baptism records at St. John's Episcopal Church, 1707 Government
Street, southeast corner of Government and Ann Street in Mobile, AL, show the father of
Moffett's children as Henry Bright Taylor. Henry
Bright Taylor was the son of General William Cannon Taylor and his second wife,
Eliza Hartwell Meade of Massachusetts. According to "Lost
Links," Henry's siblings were Octavia Walton (Taylor) Langley, born 1830 at
Cahawba, AL, and lived in Massachusetts and in 1900 in Newark, NJ; a brother
William Taylor who died leaving two daughters in Texas; half-brother John and
half-sister Mary Ann by their father's first wife, Mary Ann Mitchell, the daughter
of a Georgia governor.
On 24 Oct 1864 Moffitt Eliza Taylor and daughters Eliza Catherine Taylor and
Lily Fannie Taylor were baptized at St. John's Episcopal Church.
Henry Bright Taylor and Mrs. Moffitt Eliza Taylor were both confirmed at St.
John's on 18 June 1865.
Willis Roberts was also confirmed there 17 Oct 1869.
His marriage to "Mrs. Moffit E. Taylor" is recorded in their records as 9 Feb 1870.
During 47 years of
marriage, Willis and Moffitt lived on Congress, Monroe, Jackson, St. Louis, St.
Anthony, St. Louis, Jackson, Conception, St. Francis, Joachim, and the luxurious
St. Andrew
Hotel. The 1880 census transcription lists Willis and his wife Moffett C.
Roberts living with his unmarried Peacock sister-in-law Fannie in the household.
From 1880 to 1895 they lived on St. Louis Street near the corner of St. Joseph
Street, where the Federal Court House was later built in the early 1900s.
In 1896 they began a five-year stay on Jackson Street. In 1900 their
daughter Joel married and moved to Indiana. For locations of their homes,
Further, see Mobile City
Directories.
Children:
(f)
Eliza Catherine "Kate" Taylor (stepdaughter
b. 12 Jan 1857, per Saint John's Church records, d. 1936, Escambia Co., FL, per
Florida Death Index)
married (1)
Harry A. Woodhull (1856-28 Jan
1884) bookkeeper for the Battle House Hotel (Mobile, AL license, 06/03/1878, Book 27, page 606)
The last three years he lived at the Battlehouse Hotel, where hw was employed as
a bookkeeper. He was ill with typhoid fever for 26 days before his death
on 28 Jan 1884, about age 27, Mobile Co., AL, death certificate number 96.
Burial - Magnolia Cemetery, Range H, west half of Lot 6.
married (2) Thornton M. Goodloe and moved to Pensacola, Florida (Mobile,
AL license, 12/11/1894, Book 33, page 718). He is not in the
1909-1922 Death Records of Mobile.
(f) Lillian Fannie "Lillie" Taylor (stepdaughter
b. 30 June 1861, d. bfr 1930)
lived in Mobile and later Pensacola, Florida
(f)
Joel A. Roberts (21 Dec 1873 - 6 Mar 1916)
Jo married in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1900 at age 26 to Lee J. Ninde (pronounced "Nine' d") of Allen County, Indiana,
and settled in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The Ft. Wayne Journal and Gazette
stated in 1916 that they had married Oct. 8, 1900. He was a graduate of Harvard School of Law, the son of Judge Linden
Ninde, whose large estate was called
"Wildwood" in Allen County. She chose not to live with her inlaws in their
drafty old mansion,
deciding instead to build a more practical, modern home of her own design. When they received an offer for the house at a large profit, they
moved and built another home. Joel A. Roberts Ninde became such a
successful architect in
Fort Wayne, Indiana, that her husband and brother-in-law Daniel Ninde gave
up their law practices and formed Wildwood Builders Company. Most of their
houses were Craftsmen style bungalows. From
1913-1917 the
company also published the Wildwood Magazine, which promoted house plans and
offered many articles on stylish design, landscaping, and home improvement. (See
further references to Joel A. Roberts Ninde) An unnamed infant daughter of Joel and Lee's was buried May 22,
1906, in section J, Lot 88, Lindenwood Cemetery, Fort Wayne,
IN. Two weeks after the death of her cousin Joel's 18-year-old
daughter, Joel Roberts Ninde died
of a stroke March 6, 1916, at age 42, but many of her 300 houses
survive and her reputation as a successful architect has strengthened with time. Her father, Willis,
died the following year. His wife, Moffitt (Peacock)
Taylor-Roberts died approximately Wednesday, November 23, 1921, at her daughter Lily's home at
422 North
Palafox Street, Pensacola, Florida.
Lindenwood Cemetery (est.
1859)
Lee J. Ninde
2324 West Main Street
Fort Wayne, Indiana 46808
telephone number (260)
432-4542.
3. (m) Eber Bolles Roberts (1846-1860)
(named after mother's Mary Taylor Bolles' father, Eber Bolles) 1850
Mobile census transcription says Ella, 1860 says Eba. Visual inspection of
handwritten
census shows that it reads Eber.
Eber is also the third child listed in family
records and in the poem "Flowers
from the Heart" published 1857 by M. B. Lamar. He died at
age 14 and was buried 17 JUN 1860, Mobile death certificate #521.
A first cousin of Joel
A. Roberts, Reuben H. Roberts, Laura Roberts Pillans, and Seth W. Roberts
of Mobile at that time was Judge Williard Simeon O'Neal (son of Dr. Willis'
Roberts' sister Elizabeth and Edmund O'Neal). Simeon O'Neal had
married Rebbeca Boykin and their daughter Mary Elizabeth O'Neal married Joseph Enos Mershon. Joseph E. Mershon
was editor for the Columbus Enquirer but died in Mobile from Yellow Fever on June
15, 1860, death
certificate #507, dying two days before Eber B.
Roberts was buried in New Magnolia Cemetery.
4.
(m) Walsingham M. Roberts (18 NOV 1847 -
31 DEC 1916) Burial
in Taylor plot, Square 6, Lot 80 in Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, AL.
Plot has three rows with three graves each row. Facing
west, reading stones left to right, he is in center row, far right:
"WALSIE M. ROBERTS/BORN NOV. 18, 1847/DIED DEC. 31, 1916.
Mobile Cemetery book (1970) p. 45. Death certificate #1286, Mobile
Co. He is usually listed on the
censuses as an unmarried accountant, also listed as a
divorced attorney. 1910 census says Walsingham S. Roberts.
Some records erroneously transcribed W. M. as William. Walsingham was a family name. Joel's sister
Olivea named a son Francis Walsingham Mather. City directories
list him as having lived at 910
Government Street 1985 and also 1897, no listing for 1896, 1898 at the corner of
157 S. Jackson, 1899 and thereafter at Dexter Avenue, three south of Church (the
house he built at 53 Dexter Avenue). His marriage to Evelyn Gaines Russell
is recorded in the records of St. John's Episcopal Church and the Mobile County
marriage licenses is dated the same day, 22 Feb 1895, book 33, page 784.
She divorced him in 1899, Mobile case #06484, and then lived with her siblings
and daughter on S. Ann Street next to the Bellingraths until her death in 1940.
(See three photos of the Bellingrath house in USA Archives, Box 7A H-1b).
The Bellingraths left their town home to a church which, of course, expanded
across the property, eventually destroying neighboring homes as well.
5. (f) Mary C. "Mollie" Roberts
(26 NOV 1849-15 NOV 1933)
twin, married 26 MAR 1873 to Walter Pearce Taylor,
(1845-28 Sep 1883) son of Bacon Reese Taylor
(18 NOV 1817 - 26 MAY 1859) and Virginia (Clarico) Taylor (1825-1903) of
Charleston and Mobile. The wedding took place at the bride's home, 910
Government Street, according to the register of the Government Street
Presbyterian Church (Mobile, AL marriage license, 03/26/1873,
book 26/95,
which says "MOLLIE
C. Roberts."
Years
later a granddaughter also wrote her name as "Molly" and "Big
Mama" beside her name beside her name in the Bolles family genealogy. On
May 25, 1865, the city had been under federal occupation and soldiers were
storing munitions in a warehouse downtown. When the great magazine
explosion occurred which destroyed approximately eight square blocks, Walter
Pearce Taylor had been standing in a doorway of his store and one side of his
body was maimed. He was in pain and took large doses of medication the remainder
of his life. According to city directories,
the couple lived with the bride's family through 1880. In 1882 they lived one block away, at the southeast corner of Church and Marine
Streets; in 1883 at the south side of Palmetto Street, two west of Charles St.
Walter died 28 SEP 1883 (Mobile
Co. death certificate number 666)
and Mollie returned with their three children to live at 910 Government Street
with her brother Walsingham, where they remained
until 1898. In 1899
they were on Dexter Avenue 3 south of Church (53 Dexter Avenue). This
property remained in the family for several generations, though the directory
lists them in 1904 on the north side of Hercules Street, three doors east of Maple.
A niece
remembers "Aunt Mollie" living on Dexter Avenue. Married
daughter Laura and her husband subdivided the property and built a house next
door. Mollie is buried
in the Taylor plot, Square 6, Lot 80 of Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, AL. Plot
has three rows with three graves each row. Facing west, reading stones, she is
far left: "Mollie Roberts Taylor"/November 22, 1851/November
15, 1933. Her daughter "Mary Boles Taylor" buried in middle,
and "Walsie M. Roberts" far right. 1850 census
says she was 2 months old. 1970 book titled Magnolia Cemetery by Helen A.
Thompson, p. 45, lists them in this order: Mary, Molly, Walsie, and
no others listed in plot. Walter P. Taylor's grave is unmarked in his
parents plot, Square 5, Lot 101. Photos below (l to r)
Taylor plot, Mary C. "Mollie" Roberts Taylor, her daughter Mary Boles
Taylor, Mary C. (Roberts) Taylor's brother Walsingham M. Roberts.
|
1882 - nw corner of Church & Marine St
1883 - 53 Dexter Avenue home of Walsie Roberts and sister Mollie Roberts Taylor
1901 - Dexter Avenue home of Laura H. Taylor and husband George Guesnard Wolfe
|
Dexter Avenue
|
Three Children:
1. (f) Mary Boles Taylor (b.
20 DEC 1879, d. 18 MAY 1941 per marker) Unmarried, burial
in Taylor plot of block 6, Magnolia Cem., Mobile, AL. Niece
Ruth Wolfe wrote her dates as 12/20/79 & Aug 12, 1941.
2. (f) Laura H. Taylor (b.
19 OCT 1879 in Mobile, d. 7/7/1972) - married
06/05/1901 to George Guesnard Wolfe (3 MAR
1880-15 DEC 1952) (Mobile
Co. marriage book 36/446). He was the son of James Wolfe, Jr., and Mary
Burns. In 1910 he was a shipping clerk-Wholesale
Groceries and they lived on Dexter Avenue next to her mother, Mary C.
Roberts Taylor; Uncle Walsie Roberts; and sister, Mary Boles
Taylor. By 1920 they still lived on Dexter Avenue but Wolfe was a
clerk for a steamship company. Her DOB is from June 5, 1880,
Mobile census, showing her as seven months old. Her tombstone says DOB 19
Oct 1881, which would make her two years younger. His DOB is from June 15,
1880, Mobile census showing him as three months old. His tombstone says
DOB 3 Mar 1879, which would make him a year older. These tombstone dates
are repeated in internet sources such as J. H. Muse, Reese Family Genealogy,
Descendants of Sir David ap Rees.
Both are buried the Wolfe plot, Square 35, east half of Lot 63, Magnolia
Cemetery, Mobile, AL. 2005 record from cemetery says west half of lot 63,
but is an obvious error.
Children
of Laura Taylor & George Wolfe:
(f) Mary
Virginia Wolfe (b. 1902 in Mobile, d. 5 Nov 1977) m. 18 Jun 1927 to William C.
Westerfield (Mobile Co. Probate book 57, page 161). Some say Mary G. Wolfe.
She is buried in the Wolfe plot, Square 35, Lot 63, Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile,
AL.
(m) Walsie or
Walsey R. Wolfe (b. 7 AUG 1904 in Mobile) tombstone says 7 AUG 1905-15 DEC 1956.
He is buried in the Wolfe plot, Square 35, Lot 63, Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile,
AL.
(m) William T.
Wolfe (b. 18 MAY 1907 in Mobile, d. 22 SEP 1981) married
Sarah A. Pearce. Their
daughter LIVING (b. circa 1947) married a Naval man at the time and eventually moved to Atlanta. (Mobile,
AL marriage license 10/23/1969 book123/ 341.)
(f) Ruth
Hunter Wolfe, "Ruthie" (b. 28 Jul 1910 in Mobile, d. 29 May
2002, age 92) married 19 Jun 1939 to Preston Taylor Castleberry (b.
26 Feb 1907, d. Jul 1981) (Mobile Co. Probate book 65, page 491). She lost three children and outlived her
siblings. She wrote: "Will be in PineCrest Cemetery with
husband, Preston Taylor Castleberry, Sr., baby Preston, Jr., &
mother-in-law, Ida Taylor Castleberry McAleer."
3.
(m)
PRICE W. TAYLOR b. July 1882 in Mobile County, Alabama, and died
14 OCT 1953 in Mobile County, Alabama. His father died the year after he was born, and he
grew up at 910 Government Street. At about age 16 they moved to Dexter
Avenue. He was first listed in the city directory as a broom maker living
at the sw corner of Dexter and Church in 1898, then in 1899 as a broom maker for
S. Partin living on Dexter three south of Church. On 19 OCT 1907 he
married MARTHA ORLEAN Straughn
(b. about 1890 in Alabama), according to Mobile Co. marriage license book 41,
page 1.
Children of PRICE TAYLOR and MARTHA Orlean Straughn were:
WALTER P. TAYLOR, b. Abt. 1909, Mobile County, Alabama.
MARION P TAYLOR, b. Abt. 1911, Mobile County, Alabama
AUGUSTUS WILLIAMSON TAYLOR,
b. January 24, 1913, Mobile County, Alabama; d. December 4, 1992, Mobile, Mobile
County, Alabama; m. Helen Bush 3 AUG 1932, Mobile Co., book 61, page 97
JOSEPH WOODSON TAYLOR,
b. 10 MAY 1917 & d. 1967 in Mobile County, Alabama.
m. Pauline Celestine "Dolly" Cook (b. 16 DEC 1916
in Mobile) on 6 MAY 1942, Mobile Co. book 68, page 427. She d. 25 Jul 2004
Child1: LIVING TAYLOR m. LIVING
Child 1A: LIVING KENNEDY m. LIVING
Child
1B: LIVING KENNEDY m. LIVING
Child 2: LIVING TAYLOR m. LIVING
Child 2A: LIVING m. LIVING
Child 2B: LIVING m. LIVING
6. (m) Lamar Roberts - (26 NOV 1849 - 15 Mar 1851) - twin. 1850 census says 2 months old. Not on 1860 census. Burial: ? Mobile County Health Department Burial Records: Roberts, son of Joel A., 15 MAR 1851 w. (no death certificate number given) (Named after Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar, family friend on the 1850 census as living in the household.
7. (f) Virginia H. "Jennie" Roberts (1 JUL 1852 - 4 JAN 1928) born in the Roberts-Staples house. A granddaughter of Mary C. later wrote "Aunt Ginny" by her name in book Genealogy of the Bolles Family in America (Boston: Henry W. Dutton Son, 1865). Married George Eberlein(20 OCT 1848-10 MAR 1919) (Mobile, AL license, 05/31/1875, book 26/582, which called her JENNIE). George owned a grocery store at 74 Dauphin Street. According to the 1880 and 1882 city directories, they lived at 910 Government Street; in 1884 on the north side of Springhill Avenue, three east of Pine Street (apparently the large Victorian house that burned, which is today the property of U-Haul); in 1885-86 at Springhill Avenue seven west of Broad; 1888 at Springhill Avenue four east of Pine; in 1889 & 1890 at Springhill Avenue five east of Pine (J. Eberlein & Co. wood and coal dealer on Beauregard, with office at northeast corner of St. Joseph and St. Michael). That house on Springhill near Pine, several blocks from Broad, burned about 1890. Daughter Marietta (according to her granddaughter, Beth Miller) vividly recalled visiting friends down the street and seeing the glow from the fire in the east, then going to watch her house burn, with everything they owned, including the portrait of Joel A. Roberts. The story was that George Eberlein, after vacationing across the bay, returned on the bay and was met at the pier by his neighbor with the news that his house was afire. In 1891 they are shown at 8 New St. Francis ("J. Eberlein and Company wood and coal dealers, yard foot of Beauregard, office 100 St. Michael"); 1892 George is a salesman for Craft & Company, residence 8 New St. Francis; 1893 salesman for Marx & Greenhood, residence 8 New St. Francis; 1984 soliciting agent for Fidelity Trust & Loan Co., residence 8 New St. Francis; 1895-1897 secretary and treasurer with Alabama Paving Company, and soliciting agent of Stonewall Insurance Co., residence 8 New St. Francis. The U.S. census in 1910 shows them at Creighton Village, farther west on Springhill, and in 1920 shows Jennie widowed and living in the same area, with her daughter Winona at 1070 Springhill Avenue, a new home built due east of the Bragg-Mitchell Mansion and west of Shell Cottage. The 1930 census shows them next door to Alfred S. Mitchell and wife Minnie. This Eberlein lot was eventually subdivided for descendants and Winona's brother Palmer built a house due west, between the Eberlein house and the Bragg-Mitchell house. Burial for both George and Jennie: Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, AL. Magnolia Cemetery book, p. 7, section 2, near Trask & Hammonds.
|
|
Six Children of Jennie Roberts Eberlein and George Eberlein:
|
(f)
Marietta Eberlein
(b. 12 July 1877 d. 1 May
1959) |
|
 Marietta Eberlein Paul |
 Edward Palmer Eberlein |
 Winona Eberlein Patton |
(f) Marietta Eberlein (b. 12 July 1877d. 1 May
1959) married 28 APR 1897 (per Mobile Co.
Probate book 34. 511) to William Watson Washburn Paul
(b. 15 Dec 1873 in New
Orleans, d. 13 Nov 1966). Marietta was born at
910 Government per L. P. Williams. Mr. Paul's mother had married three times.
Granddaughter Elizabeth "Beth" Zane (Condo) Miller said that she had
dark brown eyes and dark brown hair. Beth wrote: "GrDad'sMother had been married 3 X's. She had
the sir names, Wiley, Paul (Paschal/Pascal/Zane). GrDad was a cousin to Pearl
Zane Grey. The sir names were turned around in most cases. Very confusing at
times. Zane is Mother's and my middle name. What a mess!"
Children
of Marietta Eberlein & Washburn Paul (six of eight lived):
(m) Chisholm DuMont Paul (b. 1900) Born in Alabama, Monty Paul
attended Oberlein Univ.; Hartford conservatory of music in Hartford, CT; two
hitches in the Navy. He wrote and performed on the piano in New Orleans
and New York City.
(f) Helen Earle Paul (b. 1903) Born in Alabama, married Burrell
Hale Brannan (nicknamed Jack or Doc). Beth Miller said her Uncle Jack was
a pharmacist and lived on Washington Avenue. Three children died (one single, then one
pair of twin girls) shortly after birth. When
Helen was in her mid-thirties, she had a son William Hale Brannan (nickname,
Bill or Billy) In
2005 Beth Miller called
her Helen Roberts Paul. Helen was a
designer for Thublin Gardens & Floral, 707 Marine Street, across the street
from their home.
1944-45 Mobile City Directory, Burrell Brannan worked for Albright &
Wood Drug Store, store #11 (of 16 branches) located Broad & Government
Street; Helen was a designer for Thublin Gardens & Floral, 707 Marine
Street; home was at 706 Marine.
1947 Mobile City Directory, worked for Bienville Drug Store at the
Bienville Hotel, 150 St. Francis Street, Mobile, AL; home 706 Marine.
1949-1950 Mobile City Directory, Burrell “Brannon” worked at
Gay’s Pharmacy (owned by Nathaniel S. Gay) on the east side of Carr
Street 10 north of Watson (W). (Note:
Does the W. stand for white? There
were several W and C indications in
directory); home 706 Marine Street.
1951-52 (& 53) Mobile City Directories, Megginson Drugs, 151 S.
Florida Street; Helen worked 707 Marine; home 706 Marine.
1954 Mobile City Directory, Brannan Drug Store, 463 Government Street,
phone number HE2-7794; home 706 Marine.
1960 Mobile City Directory, Albright & Wood Pharmacy, home 267 Westwood.
1967 Mobile City Directory, Albright & Wood Pharmacy, home 254 Seminole Street (about
a block away from Westwood)
Buried in Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, AL.
(f) Marietta "Mary" Paul (b. 1908) Born in Alabama,
moved to Texas and called Aunt Dee.
Married James (Jimmy) Sigler from Minneapolis, Minnesota. They had 4 children
Jimmy Dee (died age 4), Charles Edward (died age 6), Living R. Earl and Living
J. Carol.
(f)
Winona died at the age of 4 years after eating some tart berries from a bush in the yard of her Aunt Winona's and
Uncle Robert Patton. Her aunt was babysitting her and felt awful that the
poisonous fruit had been in her yard, but Winona's sister Marietta consoled her
that it could have happened anywhere.
(f) Living Elizabeth Zane Paul (b. 1913) Born in Mississippi married
Roy Waldo Condo, who died when oldest was 21
Children: (f) Elizabeth
"Beth" Condo
("Missy" as a child) married LIVING Miller. She
left home after high school and her father Roy Condo died when she was 21.
(f) LIVING
(m) Washburn Paul, Jr. (b. August 1920) Born in Alabama
According to Beth Miller, Marietta also lost one or two sets of twins who
died.
(m) Edward Palmer Eberlein - (1879 - 7
SEP 1941) married 20 JAN 1904 (per Mobile Co.
Probate book 38, 191) to Jessie J. Cassidy. E. Palmer was probably born at
910 Government, childless, raised two of his wife's sister's daughters. Devout
Christian, per LIVING Williams
(f) Winona Eberlein (25 Nov 1881-1950) m. Mr. Robertus R.
Patton (b. Nov 1885). Winona was born at 910 Government, per LIVING Williams.
Per Beth Miller, she had reddish tent hair and gray-blue eyes.
Children
of Winona Eberlein & Robertus R. Patton:
(m) (Palmer?) deceased,
lived in Pensacola, 4 children and 1 stepchild
(m) never married,
handicapped, deceased
(f)
LIVING L. Patton (c. 1919-Living) m. Donald
Lee Williams, Mobile, AL
Children of Living L. P. Williams and Donald Lee Williams:
(m) died young
(m)
LIVING Williams
(f) LIVING Williams m. Mr. LIVING Morgan
1. Living Morgan m. Living
Foley
(m)
LIVING Williams m. Living Hannon
(m) John Gaillard Eberlein,
Sr., of Mobile, AL (16 JAN 1884-18 SEP 1959), called Gill, married 05/28/1908
per Mobile Co. Probate record book 41, 329) to
Martha Elizabeth Sirmon (DOB 1 AUG 1887 in Mobile), daughter of John
Asbury Sirmon (DOB 25 June 1855) and Lora Philamelia Martin (DOB 23 MAY 1859)
Children
of John G. Eberlein & Martha E. Sirmon:
(m)
John Gaillard Eberlein, Jr. (DOB 9 AUG 1908 in Mobile, AL, DOD 11 MAR 1975)
married 24 FEB 1939 (02/20/1939 per Mobile Co.
Probate record book 65 350) to Esther Merlee Webb (DOB 15 JAN 1914 in Cunningham, AL) or 15 SEP per
walterjdavis@prodigy.net
Children of John G. Eberlein,
Jr., & Esther M. Webb:
(f) LIVING Eberlein m. Mr. GILL; children:
(f) Miss Gill m. Mr. Knickerbocker & 1 child
(f) Miss Gill m. Mr. Kral & has 2 children
(f) Carol Merlee Eberlein (DOB 11 FEB 1942 at Mobile Infirmary Hospital, DOD 24
JAN 1958 at Mobile Infirmary Hospital, Mobile, AL)
(f) Mable Elizabeth Eberlein, DOB 3 APR 1910, DOD 5 MAY 1980 in Mobile, AL
(m) James Weyburn Eberlein, Sr. (DOB 12 APR 1912 in Mobile, AL) married 30? JUN
1937 (Mobile Co. marriage book 64 page 275 says
06/24/1937) to Emily Marie Schmitz (DOB 28 OCT 1916 in
Grand Bay, AL)
Children of James W. Eberlein, Sr., & Emily
M. Schmitz:
(m) LIVING Eberlein of Toulminville, AL, m. LIVING
Gordon, with three living children: male, female, female in Birmingham, AL
(f) LIVING Eberlein m. LIVING PERKINS, with three living children, female,
female, male
(m) LIVING Eberlein m. LIVING Whitehead, with two living children:
female, male
(m) George Abbott Eberlein m. Edna C. Welch on
4 OCT 1919 per Mobile Co. Probate record book
50, 251. Beth Miller said he was married to Aunt Nancy ("possibly
another wife?")
Proven children were:
George A. Eberlein, Jr
Katherine Pierce Eberlein
Sarah Eberlein
Their children, according to Beth Miller were:
Abbott J. Eberlein, Jr., called A.J.
Allen
Adam
Alice
Annette
Alexandra, "Alex"
Sarah
(f) Helene R. Eberlein m. Bernard A. Carlin
on 14 APR 1915 per
Mobile Co. Probate record book 46, 552. They met and lived in New York
City, NY; Minnesota; and on Dog River, south of Mobile, AL, having three children:
(f) infant
female (died young)
(m)
LIVING Carlin, married three times, per cousin Beth (Condo)
Miller, a few years older than sister Marjene, served one hitch in the Service
(f)
Marjene Carlin
(died Tues. 14 Mar 2006,
buried Fri 17 Mar 2006) married 12/21/1943 to Robert
Emmett Adger (b. abt 1919, d. Sat 11 Mar 2006) (Mobile Co.
book 72/79). He was son of Thomas Player Adger and Clyde Herndon Adger.
Marriage record spells their names Marjine Carlin and Robert Emmit Adger.
She graduated Murphy High School and attended Judson College.
He died at age 87 and she died hours after his funeral.
He was a WWII vet, they were members of Trinity Presbyterian Church in
Fairhope, AL. Both interred at
Mobile Memorial Gardens. Survived by four children, nine grandchildren,
three great-grandchildren.
8. (m) Alexander
is the youngest child listed for Joel
& Mary Roberts in the Bolles genealogy published in 1865. As Bessie is NOT
listed, Alexander may have been born before her. As he is not in the 1870
census, Alexander must have died by then. He's listed in the 1950 Roberts
family history (no author cited).
9. (f) Bessie Roberts (14 Feb 1862 - 6 Jan 1941) (the baby, who inherited the
townhouse, probably named after her grandmother Elizabeth Bolles or Aunt
Elizabeth Bolles Douglass, wife of Sidney T. Douglass, attorney & Mobile
commissioner). Approximately June 1896 she married William Richard Turman, Jr.,
(1 Nov. 1865-19 Jan 1918)
and moved to Atlanta (per Roberts descendants). He reportedly was called
Richard. (This marriage is not in
Mobile Co. records.) Turman's mother was a
Boykin. (see
Turman chart) Thanks to J. Turman, we know that Wm. and
Bessie had the following children:
(f)
Laura Belle Turman (26 March 1897, died
unmarried 19 May 1922). Named after her father's sister Hattie Belle
Turman.
(m) William Richard Turman, III (born May 1900 d. 20
May 1922), married
Clio Hayes. They had no children.
In June 1900 the family lived at 132 Spring Street in the City of Atlanta, GA,
ward 6, 8th family on census sheet 31A, William R. Turman is 34 and Bessie
listed as 28 (stated birth being Feb. 1871), Daughter Laura Belle is 3 and son William R.
III less than a month old. Bessie's widowed older sister, Laura Roberts
Hunter, and two children also shared the house with them. In April 1910 the family is living in the City
of Atlanta, GA, ward 6, census sheet 10A, or Microfilm
Series: T624
Roll: 192
Page: 258.
At this time Turman, Jr.'s, occupation is listed as "agent," Laura Bell
is 13 and William R. III is 9, and the household also contained the widowed
William Richard Turman, Sr. (79 years old), and a lodger named Martha Houston
(65), plus two mulatto servants: Dennis Dixon (occupation: butler)
and wife Helen Dixon. In the 1920 census Bessie is listed as a 50-year-old widow living on West
Peachtree, in the 8th Ward of Atlanta. with both children and two young couples
(Munn & Dawson) Laura Belle (22) is a stenographer and William R. III
(19) is a "minute clerk," but the names of their employers are
illegible.
5.
Sophia "Sophy" Lowry Roberts (b.
9 Jan 1813)
DOD unknown. Married 27 June 1839 (Galveston Co., TX) to John A. Settle,
son of William
Settle and Mary "Polly" Greenlaw/Greenhow
of Virginia.
The children of William & Polly Greenlaw Settle are listed as Settles
(plural) in the research of Jan
Oldham (Polly's mother was an Oldham):
Four infants who died young
Anne Maria Bailey Settle (b. 27 Jan 1802 in Westmoreland Co., VA)
Betsey Bailey Settle (b. 14 Feb 1806 in Westmoreland Co., VA)
Edwin Bailey Settle (b. 22 Jun 1813)
John Alexander Settle (b. 22 Jul 1817)
Fraderick Settle (b. 17 Nov 1819)
John A.
Settle's brother Edwin Bailey Settle married Josephine M.
Grubbs on 11 April, 1839, in Brazoria Co., TX. (Dates confirmed in Texas
Marriages: Early through 1850 (Heritage Quest, Bountiful, UT)). John
A. Settle is listed in the book Republic
of Texas: Poll Lists for 1846, page 151. Life and Poems of Mirabeau B. Lamar
(1938),
p. 11, lists Willis Roberts' daughters only as "Olivia, Sophia, and
Laura" and p. 78 states: "The early weeks of 1851 found him (M. B.
Lamar) at New Orleans, visiting in the home of Mrs. John A. Settle, the daughter
of his life-long Friend, Willis Roberts, and sister of 'the pretty widow,' Mrs.
Olivia Roberts Mather. Mrs. Settle had in her home at this time also
another guest -- one suspects, by design -- the beautiful Henrietta Maffitt, of
Galveston."
He penned the poem "In Deathless Beauty" to
Maffitt and they heard Jenny Lind sing at the theater. The Former
President of Texas married Maffitt in New Orleans soon thereafter (Orleans
Parish, LA, marriage license: Mirabeau Buonaparte LAMAR to Henrietta
MAFFIT, 11 Feb 1851). Neither
Graham nor derivative authors give the first name of the Mrs. Settle who was
involved with Lamar's courtship. But several of John A. Settle's letters
are in Texas archives and other collections around the country, including a
business letter to M. B. Lamar which adds words to this effect: "Sophy sends her regards."
All references
to Lamar's courtship in New Orleans mention the home of "Mrs. John A.
Settle." This
site details Lamar's political policy and correctly states his wedding to
Henrietta Maffitt took place in New Orleans. Reference
in diary of her sister, Laura Roberts Pillans, 2 APR 1865, says: "Wrote to
Sophy today." Laura mentioned several letters to and from Louisiana, which
could reference sister Sophy or sister Olivea.
There exist letters of
introduction for John A. Settle from Joel A. Roberts and one from Samuel
Alexander Roberts to Jefferson Davis.
Republic of Texas receipts for reimbursement as well as land
patents such as the one below and John A. Settle and Civil War references to Capt. John A. Settle, Field and Staff Service, 2nd Texas
Cavalry.
|
Indianola,
Texas, a port city southwest of Galveston, on the Gulf Coast
|
LAND PATENT
|
Capt.
John A. Settle November
1, 1861 Emanuel
Martin. Muster Roll of November 1861. He is due pay from enlistment date
and is paid by Capt. Settle. |
1877
- 1878 City Directory Obituary
from the San Antonio Newspapers, Bexar County, Texas, week of
08-05-1882, list: Settle,
John A., M, 65, nephritis, white, native of U.S. He
would have lived 1817-1882.
Kentucky
Obituaries 1787-1854 (1977 by G. Glenn Clift) p. 207
|
NOTES:
February 15, 2006:
Received William Emmett Reese’s book The Settle-Suttle Family, which cites a letter to Frederick Settle from his
brother Edwin B. Settle, Galveston, Texas, 21 June 1878, which mentions that their
brother John's wife died 2 Apr 1878. The letter was “owned by the late Mr. James C. Settle,
Washington, D.C.” Bookseller/
copyright owner Christine
Settles Contos lists in her
updated database that Sophia L. Settle died in New Orleans, but sources me; that
information
may stem from the fact Sophia lived in
New Orleans in 1851.
January 2006: John A. Settle was
the son of William Settle and Mary “Polly” Greenlaw of Virginia, per Jan
Oldham (web page generated 19 Jan 2004).
Nov. 19, 2004 Note: John A. Settle
married Sophia L. Roberts 27 Jun 1839 in Galveston Co., TX and Edwin B. Settle
married Josephine M. Grubbs 11 April 1839 in Brazoria Co., TX per the book Texas Marriages:
Early through 1850 (Heritage
Quest, Bountiful, UT).
2004
: John Alexander Settle was the
brother of Edwin Bailey Settle who married Josephine.
Their
names are listed at the burial
of their son Edwin Irvine Settle in Kentucky
Obituaries 1787-1854 (1977 by G. Glenn Cliff).
2003: A 71 year old Sophy Settle born in NY is
listed on the Newport, R.I. census 1880 . The John A. Settle who died in San Antonio c. 5 Aug 1882 would have been the
right age for Sophia’s husband.
2002: Not sure if Mrs.
John A. Settle was a widow by 1851 or not, though all references to Lamar's courtship of
Maffitt refer to the New Orleans house as the home of "Mrs. John A.
Settle." Republic of Texas
receipts for reimbursement as well as land patents may refer to Sophy's husband
or his father. Civil War references
to Capt. John A. Settle, Field and Staff Service, 2nd Texas Cavalry, may refer
to Sophy's husband or son. Obituary
from the newspaper below doesn't say "Settle, Jr."
6.
Emily Rogers Roberts
(b. 14 June 1816-2 July 1833*) Died age 17. Buried
Church Street cemetery north
of her mother's
grave (facing west, one sees her to right of her
mother, Asenath Alexander Roberts). *Date
of birth calculated from tombstone. Pillans family records say Emily
Herndon Roberts (then "Herndon" is crossed out and "Rogers"
written above in same handwriting) "b. Jun. 14, 1816" or "Jan.
14, 1816." Calculation from tombstone indicates DOB would be 17 Dec
1815. Date per Kenneth L. Malone: DOB 18 JAN 1816 (but no sources). Notable
Men of Alabama (1904) in listing the birth order of Laura M. Roberts
Pillans' older siblings, states they were Olivia Alexander, Samuel Alexander,
Sophia Lowry, Reuben Herndon, Emily Rogers, Olivia Wooten, and Joel Abbott, in
contrast to the many census records and tombstone inscriptions listed here.
7. Reuben Herndon Roberts
(b. 30 Sept 1817 in Putnam Co., GA, d. Wednesday morning, May 28, 1884, near Birmingham, AL) married
(1) Martina T. Quigley
(b. 1832, d. 19 Feb 1873) (Mobile, AL license, 4 March 1851; book
10/193 & 11/128), married (2) Emma A. (?)
between 1873 and 1880. Like
other members of his family, Reuben moved to Texas in the late 1830s. He
was the county surveyor of Refugio County 1837 to November 28, 1839; a resident of Aransas City, incorporated January 28, 1839,
founded by its mayor, James
Powers. This was the first community in Aransas County,
TX, established at Live Oak Point, at the tip of Live Oak Peninsula, near
the channel to Copano Bay. A few family letters reflect Reuben's desire
for a military appointment. There also exists a multi-page letter that his
distraught father began at Reuben's disappearance, expressing the fear that
some tragedy had befallen him, and subsequently adding the harrowing details as
they emerged, that he had indeed been abducted by bandits and held captive for
days, climaxing in his near death. Despite great mental anguish, Reuben
struggled to make his captors think of him fondly. The band of thieves expressed that dead men tell no tales; but when it came
down to his moment, one member refused to allow the execution and he was freed.
By 1842 Reuben was a member of the Republic
of Texas Navy; he was postmaster of the town of Buffalo,
Henderson County, Texas, 26 November 1847 to 24 March 1848; then married Martina
T. Quigley in March of 1851 in Mobile. A daughter, Annie
Elizabeth Roberts (born 6 NOV 1860, died 5 OCT 1867) is the only Roberts marker in the R. H. Roberts plot as of 2002. The grave
of Martina's sister Ann E. Quigley is also marked. In her Civil War diary,
Reuben's sister Laura mentioned his presence in Mobile.
His obituary stated he outlived all his siblings, dying in Birmingham, Alabama, where he
had moved with Martina about 10 years prior.
1837
to November 28, 1839, surveyor of Refugio County
1839
listed with Willis Roberts as early inhabitants of Aransas City at Live Oak
Point in Aransas County, now a ghost town in Refugio County.
MILITARY:
Texas Adjutant General Service Records, 1836-1935
(NAV=Navy of the Republic of Texas, which existed 1836-45)
Roberts, R. H. NAV 401-23
This subseries consists of 45 muster rolls and payrolls, for 17 captains
commanding 11 ships of the Republic of Texas Navy (Austin,
Brutus, Colorado, Invincible, Lafitte, Potomac, San
Antonio, San Bernard, San Jacinto, Wharton, and Zavala)
In these records are five pay receipts for R. H. Roberts from JAN to MAY 1842:
Sloop of War Austin 19 JAN 1842, Rec. From N Hurd Purser T. N.,
Three Dollars in specie, R. H. Roberts, Lieut. M.
Back says: R. H. Roberts JAN 1843, Rec.d ? Specie, Jan 1843 (3
is backward)
Sloop of War Austin 1 MAR 1842, Rec. from
N.Hurd Purser T. Navy, Thirty Dollars in Specie, R. H. Roberts, Lieut. M.
Back says: R. H. Roberts, Rec. MAR 1842
Sloop of War Austin 20th MAR 1842, Rec.
from N. Hurd, Purser T. Navy, thirty Dollars in Specie, R. H. Roberts, Lieut. M
Back says: R. H. Roberts, Rec. MAR 1842, No. 77
Sloop of War Austin 1 MAY 1842, Rec. from
N. Hurd, Purser T. Navy, Twenty Dollars in Specie, R. H. Roberts, Lieut., M
Back says: R. H. Roberts, Rec. MAY 1842, No. 77
Sloop of War Austin 12 MAY 1842, Rec. from N. Hurd, Purser T. Navy, one hundred
and fifteen 70/100 Dollars in Specie, R. H. Roberts, Lieut. M
Back says: R. H. Roberts, Rec. MAY 1842
CAPTAIN & SHIP
Moore, E.W. (Capt. Comm.) - Ship of War Austin
Crisp, Downing H. (Lt.) - Sloop of War Austin - [Apr 1, 1844] - Jun 30, 1844 [A1] / [Jan 19, 1844] - Sep 3, 1844 [A1]
Hurd, William A. - Schooner Brutus- Enlistment from Dec 28, 1835 (Pay): May 2, 1836 - Sep 20, 1837 [A1] (Pay) Sep 11, 1837 [A1]
Departed: Houston, Galveston, New York, Velasco, N.E. Pap.
REPUBLIC OF TEXAS NAVY WAS IN EXISTENCE 1836-1846
Roberts, Reuben is listed in the book: Republic of Texas: Poll Lists for 1846, page 143
POSTMASTERS & POST OFFICES OF HENDERSON COUNTY, TEXAS (With Dates of
Appointment)
Town: BUFFALO (Henderson Co.)
Goddard, Lewis, 8 Mar 1847
Roberts, Reuben H., 26 Nov 1847
Goddard, Lewis, 24 Mar 1848
| LAND
PATENTS: Fannin County, TX, acreage sold 20 NOV 1855: County: Fannin Abstract Number: 936 District/Class: Fannin 2nd File Number: 156 Original Grantee: Reuben H. Roberts Patentee: John D. Black Title Date: Patent Date: 20 Nov 1855 Patent No: 735 Patent Vol: 3 Certificate: 154 Part Section: Survey/Blk/Tsp: Adj County: Acres: 100.00 |
County:
Fannin Abstract Number: 937 District/Class: Fannin 2nd File Number: 170 Original Grantee: Reuben H. Roberts Patentee: John D. Black Title Date: Patent Date: 20 Nov 1855 Patent No: 863 Patent Vol: 4 Certificate: 154 Part Section: Survey/Blk/Tsp: Adj County: Acres: 494.00 |
1859
ad in Mobile City Directory & depiction of an 1876 building now
standing at 102 Dauphin Street, the restaurant Little Kitchen
 |
1850 census shows
him living in his brother Joel's household in Mobile, Alabama
1851, March 4: He married (Mobile, AL license,
book
10/193 & 11/128)
Martina T.
Quigley (b.
1832, d. 19 Feb 1873 in Birmingham, per records of the Government Street
Presbyterian Church in Mobile, AL).
1854 Mobile newspaper, week of Nov.
11: "New Hardware Establishment" "Mr.
Reuben H. Roberts has lately opened a new hardware establishment on Dauphin
Street, between Jackson and Joachim, where he has a large assortment of all
kinds of house furnishing goods and hardware, cutlery, &c., to which he
invites the attention of the public. Mr. Roberts is well known to our
citizens, is thoroughly acquainted with the business and deserving of
success."
Mobile City Directories
1855-6 - Roberts R H,
hardware, 145 dauphin.
1859 - Roberts R H, hardware, 102 dauphin, res ws conception 1 s st anthony (Note: this is
near the southwest corner of Conception and St. Anthony. The corner house,
is the site of 157-159 Conception, the Cornelius Robinson Twin Houses (still
standing). One south of St. Anthony would be the southernmost of the twin
houses, 157 North Conception. Note that Reuben did not live with his
mother-in-law at this time. Biddie Quigley lived a block south, near the
corner of Conception and St. Francis, across from the corner of Bienville
Square.
1866 - Roberts R H, firm Fletcher & Roberts, res ss government w broad
(across from brother Joel's family?)
1867 - Roberts R H, hardware, 74 dauphin, res sw scott and conti
1870 - no listing
1873 - no listing (Martina T. (Quigley) Roberts died 19 Feb 1873 in Birmingham,
AL, per Government Street Presbyterian Church records, Mobile
1860 Mobile City Census shows Rueben H.
Roberts living at ward 7
in the home of his mother-in-law, "Biddie" Quigley (nee
Bridget Thomas).. The 1859 city directory
places them at the west side of
Conception between St. Louis and St. Anthony. The 1870 census still
shows him living there with his wife and her sisters and
mother. It shows his son Walter, age 10, daughter A.M. as age 8. It also shows an
18-year-old female named. M. Roberts at school
(b. 1852). The 1880 census shows Biddie Quigley as 90 years old living with four
daughters: Ann E. Quigley,
principal of the girls school at Barton Academy; Mary J. Quigley, Fanny Quigley,
and
the widowed Aurelia Quigley Roberts.
Only remaining houses on Conception Street between St. Anthony and St. Louis.
CIVIL WAR:
Roberts, R. H. - AL 2nd Volunteer Militia Regiment A
Roberts, Reuben H - AL 1st Mobile Infantry F
Roberts, Reuben H. - AL 4th Infantry Reserves A
Children of Rueben H. Roberts and
Martina T. Quigley Roberts: (See
Census
Records)
(m) (Charlie?) Son born 1851, son of R. H. Roberts, age 2, buried 25
Dec
1853, Burial Records,
Mobile Co. Health Department
(m) Walter R*. Roberts (b. 1856 per *1860 census, though 1870
census says 10 yrs old) (Walter
Reuben Roberts?)
Mobile Co. Health Dept death
records show Walter P. Roberts, 14-year-old male, buried 5 Sep 1871
(f) Annie Elizabeth Roberts (6 Nov 1860-5 Oct
1867) mentioned in the diary of her Aunt Ann E. Quigley, her namesake
(f) A. M. (b. 1862 - d. after 1870) (probably
named after her aunt, Mrs. Aurelia M. Quigley, who married Wm. J. Roberts)
R. H. Roberts Plot
in Square 19, lot 123 of Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, AL, east of Withers & Crawford
plots (Crawford's tall monument), west of Taylor/LeBlanc/Ross plot. South
step going up to plot reads "R. H. Roberts."
Step from north side reads "Quigley."
The adjoining Quigley lot is #102. 2003 observations: Southwestern side of plot given for burial of
ministers. Other individual markers missing. Perhaps a dozen unmarked
graves in this plot, as well as the marked graves of four or five clergymen.
1. One illegible little vertical marker lying down ("Charlie"? ....babe?). Not in 1970 cemetery book; this marker may belong elsewhere.
|
2. Inscribed base of a
broken urn reads: ROBERTS. BORN NOV. 6, 1860, DIED OCT. 5, 1867  |
R. H.
Roberts plot in Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, AL: Looking west toward Crawford |
|
1855-6 - Roberts R H, hardware, 145 dauphin.
1859 - Roberts R H, hardware, 102 dauphin, res ws conception 1 s st anthony
(Note: this is near the southwest corner of Conception and St. Anthony.
The corner house, is the site of 157-159 Conception, the Cornelius Robinson Twin
Houses (still standing). One south of St. Anthony would be the
southernmost of the twin houses, 157 North Conception. Note that Reuben
did not live with his mother-in-law at this time. Biddie Quigley lived a
block south, near the corner of Conception and St. Francis, across from the
corner of Bienville Square.
1866 - Roberts R H, firm Fletcher & Roberts, res ss government w broad
1867 - Roberts R H, hardware, 74 dauphin, res sw scott and conti
1870 - no listing
1873 - no listing. (Martina T. (Quigley) Roberts died 19 Feb 1873 in Birmingham,
AL
After daughter
Annie's death in 1867 and son Walter's in September 1871, it appears that Reuben
and Martina moved to Birmingham, Alabama, around 1872. Martina T. (Quigley) Roberts died 19 Feb 1873 in Birmingham,
AL, per records at Mobile's Government
Street Presbyterian Church. Her body would have probably been returned to
Mobile's Magnolia Cemetery, where her children are buried. There is no
record of her being laid to rest at Birmingham's historic Oak Hill Cemetery,
founded in 1871. That cemetery has detailed records of each interment in
all years except 1873. A web site states, "Although few burials are
recorded in 1873, it is confirmed that many, if not most, of the cholera victims
of the 1873 epidemic were buried there as well." But the Roberts plot
there is owned by "the heirs of R. H. Roberts."
Mobile Death and/or Burial Records, Mobile County, Alabama
1871-1990
lists B. Quigley and the date "Nov 2, 1880(?)"
Reuben Roberts is listed on the 1880 census as a
50-year-old hardware merchant
in Jefferson County, Alabama, married to a 24-year-old Emma A. Roberts.
They had a live-in cook with two children. Jefferson County
marriage records show Emma A. May married R. A. (sic) Roberts on 01 Jan 1874.
His obituary, printed
in the Mobile newspaper Saturday, May 31, 1884, stated he died near Birmingham on
Wednesday morning (May 28, 1884), detailed his accomplishments and
occupation as a hardware merchant, did not mention either wife, gave only
his father's name, and stated that Reuben had been a devout Methodist and the last of his
generation. The R. H.
Roberts plot is Block 5, Lot 23, Oak
Hill Cemetery, located at 1120 North 19th Street, Birmingham,
AL 35234. The interment records list these graves in the R. H.
Roberts plot:
ROBERTS, R. H. 62 YEARS 28 May 1884 Estate of R. H.
Roberts
ROBERTS, Van 24 YEARS 15 Aug 1884 Estate of R. H. Roberts
ROBERTS, Dan 20 YEARS 29 Aug 1884 Estate of R. H. Roberts
SPARROW, F. S. infant, 29 Aug 1892
Note, the date listed is the recorded interment date, not
necessarily the date of death
|
Oak Hill Cemetery's
Official Site |
|
|
Mobile Death
records 1909-1922
Name Date Death
Certificate Number
Alice M. Quigley 31 Oct 1922 #1242
Margaret E. Quigley 16 Jan 1920 #56
William J. Quigley 7 Jan 1909 #29
Emma Augusta Alston (Sep 24, 1842 - Jun 3, 1929) was the daughter of Judge William Jeffreys ALSTON (1800-1876, son of Nathaniel Alston and Mary Grey) and Martha CADE (18 MAY 1809-28 May 1846, daughter of William Cade and Priscilla Easley). William Jeffreys Alston was a judge of Marengo Co., courthouse in Linden, Alabama. Home was nearby Magnolia, Alabama. He was a Whig Representative from Alabama to the 31st U.S. Congress. Buried: Alston family plot, Magnolia Cemetery, Magnolia, Alabama.
Emma Augusta Alston married three times:
1. B. F. MAY (Benjamin F. or Benjamin T. May) - married on the 1860 census (physician), and 1870 (farmer) in Magnolia, Marengo Co., AL
2. Reuben H. ROBERTS - (previously of Mobile) moved to Birmingham (Jefferson Co.) and was widowed in 1873. This was the second marriage for both Reuben and Emma and took place 1 January 1874. The 1880 census shows him as a hardware merchant in Birmingham. He died May 1884.
3. Caleb S. MORTON - (Nov 13, 1859 - Mar 2, 1945) married July 20, 1886 in Marengo County. He had grown up in Magnolia also, listed in the 1860 census. They are married and living in Magnolia on the 1900 census. In the 1910 and 1920 census, they are living in Baldwin County with a sister named Sarah Robinson. Caleb Morton is buried in the Alston plot beside her, Magnolia Cemetery, Magnolia, Marengo Co., AL.
8. Laura Malvina Roberts (25 Sep 1819-25* Aug 1883) Born in Dallas Co, AL, lived in Mobile, AL. Married Palmer Job Pillans, son of Elizabeth Palmer and John Christopher Pillans. (Mobile, AL marriage license, 1 FEB 1845, book/page 8/70 & 7/539. Pillans family records say 2 FEB 1845.). Laura and Palmer are buried in Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, AL, Square 6 - "Laura Roberts Pillans./Wife of/Palmer Pillans./Born in Cahaba/Sept. 25th*, 1819./Died Aug. 20th, 1883. Facing west, reading stones, she is to left of husband: "Palmer J. Pillans./Born on Edisto Island, S.C./Jan. 31*, 1816. Died in Mobile./June 21, 1898." Pillans family records say d. 21 June 1898. *Ken Malone's information says DOB 30 JAN 1816. Notable Men of Alabama (1904) states of Palmer Job Pillans: "In early manhood he married Laura Malvina Roberts, a lady of great social worth and distinguished ancestry on both sides of her family." They had met in Galveston and lived, after their marriage, in Bonham, TX, where he served as postmaster for part of 1846, was a practicing attorney, and acted as field agent for an outfit working for the colonization of North Texas. Notable Men of Alabama (1904) further states: "He was a graduate of Charleston College, Charleston, S.C., at the age of eighteen. When still young he served as a volunteer in the war against the Seminoles in Florida, and was given a commission in reward for gallant conduct. Subsequently he was with John C. Fremont and others in the United States Topographical survey of the North Carolina mountains, made with a view to the removal of the Seminoles, and was on railroad surveys in the same territory. When the difficulties occurred between Texas and Mexico he joined the patriot forces, and was given a major's commission in the regular army of the new-born republic. In 1849 Major Pillans removed to New Mexico, where he engaged actively in public affairs and was elected chief justice when the Territory made its first efforts for Statehood. Shortly after this period he removed to Mobile, Ala., which city was destined to be his home until the close of his useful life. He was a Mason and became Grand Master of the Alabama Masons. He joined the Confederate army and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in an infantry regiment. He acted as engineer in the field in connection with the fortifications of Mobile, and after the war held the office of city engineer until the period of reconstruction." Their home was at 906 Government Street, Mobile, third in a row of large Roberts townhouses standing until 1979. In 1961 her diary was found there in a drawer. He left a memoir to his descendants which equaled 85 single-spaced pages. See Handbook of Texas for more about Palmer Job Pillans.
|
Children of Laura
Malvina Roberts and Palmer Job Pillans:
1.
(m) Harry
Pillans (27 Jun 1847*-12 Mar 1940) Born in Bonham,
TX *Rootsweb says 1845. Burial:
Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, AL, Pillans plot in Square 6. Married 28 Apr
1875 to Elizabeth Daisy Henshaw Torrey (13 May 1855 -30 Aug 1946) (born
at Claiborne, burial,
Pillans plot, Square 6, Magnolia Cem. Harry Pillans was a civil engineer, draftsman,
attorney, mayor of Mobile (1914, 1916, 1919-1920, per Mobile Fact &
Tradition by Erwin Craighead (1930); or 1914, 1916, and
1919-1921 per The Harbinger).
As a state legislator, ratified the 1901 Alabama State Constitution.
He enlisted in May 1864 in the 62nd Alabama infantry, CSA. He was one of the
original law partners in the law firm of Torrey, Pillans, and Hanaw in 1870,
which is still in existence and known as the oldest law firm in Alabama
(although the name has changed). See: Notable
Men in Alabama.
(MORE) Residence: 908 Government St., Mobile, AL,
built by his uncle Joel A. Roberts. Also owned his parents’ home at 906
Government, which he later rented to Mrs. Raphael Semmes, widow of famed Admiral
Semmes. In 1868, he was one of the charter members of the Mardi Gras
organization Order of Myths, the oldest Mardi Gras krew in existence, and
together with Morton Toulmin designed the official emblem of the OOM’s, Folly,
in court jester attire, chasing Death around the broken column of
life--identical to the fluted columns next door at the Roberts' house. Daisy
H. Torrey was daughter
of Judge Rufus Campbell Torrey (whose parents were John Torrey and Sally
Richardson) and Elizabeth L. Sargent Henshaw (whose parents were Andrew Henshaw
and Elizabeth Isbell Carson.) Elizabeth L. Sargent Henshaw had died in
childbirth and the children raised by Judge Torrey and his second wife and
former sister-in-law, Mary Anderson Isbell Henshaw.
Four
Children of Harry Pillans and Elizabeth Daisy Henshaw Torrey:
|
1. (m)
Palmer Pillans (3
NOV 1876-MAR 1976) married Emmie D. Price (Mobile, AL license 04/03/1902 book 37/93) Child (f) Martha Torrey Pillans married 06/06/1937 to Clarkson M. Hamilton (Mobile Marriage book 64, p. 249) Lived in the Price home on Government Street, Mobile, AL, which antique dealer Mr. Grubbs (Dauphin Street) said was the oldest house left on Government Street, west of Broad Street. child: (m) LIVING Hamilton married LIVING St. John. Their child: (f)LIVING Hamilton |
|
2.(f) Mary Isbell Pillans (b. 15 Aug 1881 in
Claiborne, AL; d. 2 AUG 1916 in Mobile, AL) Buried: Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile,
AL. Rootsweb says DOB 15 Aug. 1885. Married 12/15/1910
to: George
Stark Gaines (b. 13 DEC 1879 in Mobile, AL, d. 15 JAN 1962). One
Rootsweb chart calls her Elizabeth Isbell Pillans.
child: (f)LIVING
Gaines (DOB 5 NOV. 1911 in Mobile)
3.
(f) Laura Edith Pillans (b. 7 June
1885, d. 30 NOV 1973)unmarried
(see tombstone) Pillans plot, Magnolia
Cemetery, Mobile, AL
4.(m) Harry
"Hal" Torrey Pillans (DOB 12 NOV
1887, DOD 1 NOV 1981) Buried: Pillans family plot, Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, AL
married: Rosalia
Navarro (DOB 8 OCT 1890, DOD 25 MAY 1961) born Key West, FL, "wife of Harry
Torrey Pillans." Buried: Pillans family plot, Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile,
AL - 2
daughters:
Mary and Edith (others?)
child 1: (f)
LIVING Pillans-married Garet Van Antwerp
four living children
child 2:
(f) Patricia Anne Pillans (3 Mar 1922-12
Jan 2000) who married
James Junius Johnson, deceased. They married 27 Aug 1946 (Mobile Co., Book 77,
p. 506.) Four
living children
2. (f) Ida Pillans (12 DEC 1848*-11 SEP 1931) born in Bonham, TX. Burial: Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, AL Pillans plot in Square 6. Pillansworld website says DOB is 1 DEC or 12 DEC 1845, Ken Malone at Rootsweb says 1843. Married Otway B. Norvell (c. 1840-1905) (Mobile, AL license 6/21/1869, book 24/62; married 22 JUN 1869. His burial: 3 JUL 1905 - Louisville, Kentucky, per PillansWorld. Recollections of a childhood friend in Old Covington Kentucky. His Civil War memoir donated DEC 1951 by his cousin, Mrs. Almarine R. Lacey of Shreveport, Louisiana, to the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill, NC. Ms. Lacey was a descendant of Olivea Alexander Roberts, whose grandson Francis Walsingham Mather married Mary Ellen Cheney, and their daughter Olivia Alexander Mather married A. R. Lacey.
3. (m) Palmer "Frank" Pillans (2 OCT 1853, "died at age 6 years" on 19 AUG 1860). Burial: Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, AL, no marker by 1970. Pillansworld states his DOB as 1854. Mobile Sunday Register 26 AUG 1860, page 3, col. 3, states Interment was Aug 20 for "Palmer F. Pillans, son of P.J. Pillans, 4 yr 10 months, casualty."
4. (f) Edith Laura Pillans
(16 MAY 1858*-26 AUG 1951) *per tombstone. Family records say DOB 15 MAY.
*Pillansworld says 16 MAY 1857. Burial: Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, AL
married Rev. Howard Rutherford
Walker (1 OCT 1852-1 OCT 1917.)** (Mobile, AL license,
11/28/1881, book 29/78).
Episcopal minister. Burial: Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, AL, with wife and
inlaws above, Pillans plot in Square 6. **Pillansworld & Rootsweb say DOB 10
JAN 1852, DOD 10 SEP 1917; Rootsworld says DOB 19 JAN 1852 in Dallas Co., AL.
Child of Edith
Laura Pillans and Rev. Howard Rutherford Walker:
(m) Howard Seaborn Jones Walker (b.
18 JUL 1891 in Woodland Falls, Dallas Co., AL, d. SEP 1971 in Tuscaloosa, AL)
Mobile Co., AL, Coroner.
married Mary Motte Rhett (b. 14 MAR 1891 in Mobile, AL, d. 20 MAR 1971)
(Mobile, AL license. 20 JAN 1916) Other
researchers say Mary Mottie Rhett. Two male children LIVING, &
grandchildren
Photos of
the Pillans family plot, Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, Alabama
9.
Willis Roberts, Jr.
(b.
19 Mar 1822) per Daisy Pillans'
records
10. Seth Willis Roberts
(b.22
Dec 1823, or 1820
in Pennsylvania per censuses, d. Dec 1880 in Biloxi, Mississippi)
Married 10
May 1847 (per Mobile,
AL license, book 8/234
& 9/95) to Claudine
LaCoste (b. 1830, d. 3 Dec 1887, Mobile Co. death certificate
1010).
Seth owned a drug store at 29 Dauphin Street; by 1859 the address was changed to 33
Dauphin, while his residence was at 63 St. Michael Street. They
were members
of Trinity Episcopal Church in Mobile, where most of their children were
baptized. (Trinity Episcopal Church, Mobile,
Alabama, History, Baptisms and Marriage Records 1845-1915.) He probably died between 1878-1880 as he is not on the 1880
census when the family was in Biloxi, Harrison Co., MS.
He died there in December 1880. There is no death certificate for him in Mobile
County, AL. Youngest daughter was born in Biloxi in 1871. Claudine’s name is frequently written Claudia in records
and she may have been called Claude, a nickname also passed down to descendants.
He is mentioned in the Dictionary
of American Naval Fighting Ships as purchasing a decommissioned naval
gunboat. The The Cricket No. 4 was a
wooden-hulled sidewheel steamer built at Cincinnati, Ohio
in 1863, which the Navy bought in Cincinnati on 23 January
1864 from Stephen Morse and co-owners. It was renamed the Tallahatchie on
26 January and designated "tinclad gunboat no.
46." The sidewheeler was "held at Cincinnati for a fortnight by
ice in the Ohio River before she could be moved downstream to
Cairo, Ill., to be fitted out and lightly armored." It was used to
intercept cotton being smuggled out of the south during
the war. After peace came in the spring of 1865, the
Tallahatchie was decommissioned 21 July 1865 at Mobile Bay and sold
at auction to S. W. Roberts on 12 August 1865. The sidewheeler
was redocumented as Coosa on 25 August. She was subsequently destroyed
by fire at Lieking River, Ky., on 7 July 1869.
Sidewheelers similar to the COOSA:
http://www.artnet.com/artwork_images/784/13099.jpg
http://www.artnet.de/artwork_images/143276/142088.jpg
http://www.p4a.com/item_images/medium/20/28/97-1.jpg
http://www.marthasvineyardgifts.com/assets/images/MarthasVineyardLifestylePhotos_monohansett258WS.jpg
http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/parks/explore/magazine/spsu2001/pictures/paddlewheeler.jpg
http://website.lineone.net/~d.ord/Tugs%20and%20Ships.htm
NOTE: There were two Seth
Robertses in the area, including Civil War
records of a Seth W. Roberts in Mobile/Pensacola, FL area.
Mobile City Directories:
1855-6 - Roberts SW, firm R, Lacoste & co, res country.
1859 - Roberts, Seth W, druggist, 33 dauph, res 68 st michael
1866 - no listing
1867 - Roberts, Seth W, druggist, 33 dauphin, res telegraph road
1870 - Roberts Seth W. druggist, res ws Wilkinson bet Canal and Charleston
1873 - Roberts Seth W. keeper powder magazine, res ws Kilmarnock bet Spring Hill
Shell and Spring Hill roads
1874 - Roberts Mordecai, clerk, res ws Kilmarnock 2 s Spring Hill rd
Roberts Seth W. druggist,
res ws Kilmarnock 2 s Spring Hill rd
1875 - Roberts Seth W. druggist, res ws Kilmarnock 1 s Spring Hill road
1876 - Roberts Seth W. druggist, res ws Kilmarnock 1 s Spring Hill road
1877 - Roberts Seth W. druggist, res ws Kilmarnock 1 s Spring Hill road
1878 - Roberts Seth W. druggist, 50 Government, res ws Kilmarnock 1 s
Spring Hill avenue
1879-1883, 1885-6, 1887-1899 - no listing
1859 ad in Mobile City
Directory
Roberts-Watkins plot
Children
of Seth Willis Roberts and Claudine LaCoste Roberts:
(See
Census
Records)
*1. Mordecai Roberts (b.
1850, d. 1894) m. Mary E. Johnson. Occupation at age 20: miller.
Children: (m) Seth, (f) Mordecai b. about 1896, (f) Grace.
2. Sarah Elizabeth "Sally" Roberts (b.
21 Mar 1852) on 1860 & 1870 census,
baptized 1 Jan 1853, with Miss Sarah Roberts in attendance.
Married (probably in Biloxi, MS) Thomas W. Watkins of South Carolina,
and lived in Biloxi, MS, for a while around 1880, then returned to Mobile as a
widow and ran a dairy while helping to raise her nieces and nephews.
3. Irene (b. 2 JAN 1854) baptized 7 May 1854 (see twin
Pauline below)
4. Pauline (b. 2 JAN 1854) baptized 7 May
1854.
Burial Records of
Mobile County 1820-1856 by Mitchell & Moffett:
"Roberts, Dau of Seth W. 13
Nov 1854"; "Roberts, Dau of Seth W. 20 Nov 1854";
Index to Burial Records of Mobile Co., 1820-1856 by Logan:
"Roberts, Twin daughters of Seth, p. 210"
5.
Seth
Willis Roberts, Jr.
(b. 31 Jul 1855, d. Jul 1860), baptized 19 Apr 1857, ill two days, died of "brain fever" (Confused
with nephew S. W. Roberts below?)
6. William
P. Roberts (b.
1857, d. 24 Mar 1920 in precinct 11, Mobile) probably married Mariah
Howell 13 Jan 1876 (Mobile Co. book 27, page 20).
7. Joseph B. Roberts (b.
July 1859)
sailor.
1880 census
- age 21, sailor, married twice.
1900 census, June
6 - Steamboat captain Joseph "C" Roberts (41) (b. Oct 1859) and wife
"Minnie H." (22)(b. Dec 1877 in Canada) had been married three years
and were living on Adams Street with children: from his first marriage,
Sadie (6)(b. May 1892 in Alabama, mother from Alabama); and 2-year-old Hettie (b.
Oct 1897 in Mississippi, mother from Canada).
1910 census, May 10 - lists this as the second marriage for
riverboat pilot Joseph B. Roberts ("57")and first marriage for 32-year-old
"Mary E," and they had been married 13 years. She had four of
four children living: Hattie (12), Josie A. (9)(b. 1901), Bettie (6)(b.
1904), Beauregard (4)(b. 1906). It lists at the bottom of the family
daughter Sarah C. (17).
1920 census, January 18 - tugboat captain Joseph B. Roberts
("52"), wife Mary H. (38 from Canada), children Agnes O.(19), Betty-Jean (17),
Gordon R. (15).
8.
Beauregard Roberts (b.
10 Aug 1861
1. Sidney Gottselig Roberts (b. 14 June 1892)
"Sydney G." per census. Confirmed 17 Jan 1909, St. John's
Episcopal Church, Mobile, AL. In
1910 census for Napoleonville, Mobile Co., AL, he was living with his aunt
Claude & Uncle Arthur Bombey, Aunt Sally (Roberts) Watkins, and cousins.
He
married Lee A. J. Davis. Daughter Lee
Ada Davis Roberts was born 22 July 1920; daughter Julia Barnetta Roberts was
born 29 Jan 1922; both were baptized 16 Dec 1923 at St. John’s Episcopal
Church, Mobile, AL. Sidney G. Roberts, Jr., d. 21 Jan 1923, buried 22 Jan
1923, St. John's Episcopal.
2. Corinne (b. Feb. 1894) per census
3. Marion May Roberts (b. 14 Nov 1895, baptized 19 April
1896, St. John's Episcopal Church, Mobile, AL.)
4. Beauregard Roberts (b. 14 April, 1897, baptized 17 April
1897, St. John's Episcopal Church, Mobile, AL. d. 18 Apr 1897, buried 19 Apr
1897 (St. John's), 19 Apr 1897 Mobile death cert. #340.) Parents Beauregard
and Fanny are shown on the 1900 census, Mobile Co., Alabama, with 3 of 3
children living.
9. Corine/Corrine Roberts (b.
23 Nov 1863)
10. Mary A. Roberts (b.
1867) per 1870 census, Mary H. (per 1880 census transcription), Mary
"M." per 1880** census.
11. Claudia M. Roberts (b.
July 1872 in Mississippi). In 1900 per census she lived with
widowed Philadelphia cousin Alice Roberts Potter-Shallcross in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. Married in 1902 to
Arthur Bombey and had son Thomas D. Bombey (b. 1905); by 1910 was
living in Mobile, AL and sharing their home with older sister Sally Roberts
Watkins and nephew & nieces Sydney G.(16), Sarah (16), and Mordicai (14).
Claudia wrote a historical novel using family members as characters.
After the family entreated her not to publish it, she moved to Hollywood,
California, and worked in the film industry as a film editor and subsequently as
a scriptwriter.
*(m)
Mordecai Roberts (b. 1850, d. 13 Sep 1894,
Mobile Co. death cert. 749, buried 14 Sep 1894, St. John's) married
23 Dec
1884 in St. John's Episcopal Church (per Mobile, AL license, book 0/274)to
Mary E.
Johnson (d. 3 June 1900, cert.
514, buried 4 June 1900,
St. John’s).
Both Mordecai Roberts & "Mamie Johnson Roberts" are buried at
Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, AL, with "Son, Seth Willis Roberts."
(Magnolia Cem. book, page 152), far east end of section 17. One joint marker for
those three; looks not to have been original marker, and has no dates thereon.
Others probably vandalized. Only other marker in this plot for 9 or 12 is an
infant's grave at northeast corner. Both Mordecai and Mamie died before
their children were grown. Kathleen A. Hunt and St. John’s Episcopal Church records say Mary Evelyn
Johnson. The church records call her
Mary Evelyn Johnson Snow. She was probably a widow. Tombstone says Mamie Johnson Roberts.
In March 2005 grandson Mawk Arnold said Mary Elizabeth Alexander.) One
descendant lists her name as Mary
Evelyn Johnson, a grandson lists it as Mary Elizabeth Alexander.
Children of Mordecai Roberts and Mary Evelyn "Mamie"
Johnson Roberts:
1. (f) Mary Claudine "Claude" Roberts
(b. 21 Dec 1885, baptized 4 July 1886 St. John's Episcopal Church, Mobile)
married (possibly 22 June 1909; see original Mobile
Co. book 42, page 152) to Pat Byrne (Sheriff of Mobile 1926-1930) and had three
children:
1. (m) LIVING
Byrne, an Episcopal bishop
2. (m) LIVING
Byrne, an accomplished pianist, organist and vocalist
3. (m) Arthur LaCoste Byrne, a long-time automobile
dealer, died around 2000, m. 12 Jan 1948 (Mobile Co. book 80, page 61), wife LIVING in Mobile, AL; three children:
1.
(m) A. Byrne, LIVING, Sergeant Major in Alabama National Guard, stationed in
Iraq 2004-2005.
2. (m) Bradley R. Byrne, living attorney, Alabama state senator, married
with four children
3. (f)
LIVING
Byrne
2.
(f) Grace Evelyn Roberts (18
July 1888, baptized 2 Sep 1888 St. John's Episcopal Church, Mobile)
married 10 Dec. 1907 (Mobile Co. book 41,
page 98) to Harry Leftwich Hargrove; children: Two sons, both deceased.
3. (m) Seth Willis Roberts - died
"about nine years of age" from a head injury suffered when his high-back-wheel
bike threw him onto an oak root. He lived a short time after the fall.
The Mobile Register listed cause of death as "brain fever"--most
likely a hemorrhage. (Mobile Co. Death Records, certificate 281, 8 March
1906.)
4.
(f) Mordecai Roberts (b: 30 Apr
1894, baptized 3 Nov 1894, St. John's Episcopal Church, Mobile).
Both
parents died before she reached her teens. She was raised with siblings by her Aunt Sally
(Roberts) Watkins, a Mobile dairy operator, and attended Barton Academy.
1910 Mobile Co. Census for
Napoleonville, Mobile County, has Sarah E. (Roberts) Watkins living with her sister Claudine & her husband
Arthur Bombey & son Thomas D. Bombey. The Roberts nephews and nieces living with
them there are (m) Sidney G & (f) Sarah, both "16," and (f) "Mordica"
age "14" (all these ages should be one or two years older). She
taught school prior to her marriage. Married 1
Jun 1916 (per Mobile, AL license, book 47/369) to John Hawkins Arnold (b 19 Aug. 1891)
of Waxahatchie, Texas.
Eight Children of Mordecai Roberts-Arnold and John Hawkins Arnold (five living):
1. (m)
LIVING
(b. 7 Jan. 1918) married E. J. Rogers,
11 children
Child: (f) S. E. Arnold (b.
20 Nov. 1944) born in Dallas Co., TX
2. (f) Jacqueline "Sue" Arnold
died 1995 in Fairhope, AL, from heart problems. Seven children.
3. (m) Patrick Aldredge Arnold (20 Oct. 1922 - 1944) Died
in an Army Air Corps plane accident.
No children.
4. (m) LIVING
(b.30 NOV 1924 in Tyler, TX). Four children.
5
(f) Grace Evelyn Arnold
(18 May 1926-25 Mar 2006)
born in Dallas Co., TX, married 2 Jan 1945 (Mobile Co. Book 74/65) to Robert
Herbert King, Fairhope, AL. Three
children.
6. (f) LIVING.
Three children.
7. (f) LIVING.
Six children.
8. (f) LIVING.
Five children.
Corrections &
Contributions
Sources:
Verse Memorials (W. P. Fetridge & Co., New York, 1857) by Mirabeau B.
Lamar
Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar (University of Pennsylvania thesis, Austin,
Texas, 1922) by Asa Kyrus Christian
Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar (Texas Archives, 1928) six volumes
edited by Gulick, et al.
Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar: Troubadour and Crusader (Southwest
Press, Dallas, 1934) by Herbert Pickens Gambrell
The Life and Poems of Mirabeau B. Lamar (The University of North Carolina
Press, 1938) by Philip Graham
The Poet President of Texas: The Life of Mirabeau B. Lamar, President
of the Republic of Texas (Jenkins Publishing Company: The Pemberton
Press, Austin, 1977) by Stanley Siegel
Thunder Beyond the Brazos: A Biography of Mirabeau B. Lamar (Eakin
Press, Austin, Texas, 1985) by Jack C. Ramsay, Jr.
Those Southern Lamars: The Stories of Five Illustrious Lamars (Xlibris
Corporation, 2000) by Thomas Lamar Coughlin
History of Alabama (Chicago,
1921) by Thomas M. Owen
Alabama Legislature Journals
(See abstracts)
The Eggnog Riot: The Christmas Mutiny At West Point
(Presidio Press, San Rafael, CA, 1979) by Col. James B. Agnew, USA
(Ret.)
Diplomatic Correspondence of the
Republic of Texas, three volumes
official and personal letters: Texas State Library and Archives, Austin
Texas
Texas Adjutant General Service Records
National Archives: War Dept. Collection of Confederate Records, record
group 109, Microfilm series M-437 and M-438
Papers of Jefferson Davis at Rice University, Houston, Texas (Published by LSU
Press)
wedding announcements: New Orleans Times Picayune
Handbook of Texas
Genealogy of the Bolles Family in America
(Boston: Henry W. Dutton & Son, 1865) by John Bolles
Ottway B. Norvell memoir: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
Manuscripts Department
Papers of Sam Houston
Frontier Times Magazine
unpublished diary of Laura Roberts Pillans
unpublished Memoir of Palmer Job Pillans
unpublished diary of Daisy Pillans
M. Adger
M. Van Antwerp
M. R. Arnold
Linda Derry, Site Director & Archaeologist, Old Cahawba, 719 Tremont Street,
Selma, Al 36701
George Hills
R. Isbell
Kenneth L. Malone
DeCody Brad Marble
R. G. Moriarty
L. Williams