My Genealogy Hound

CHARLES HENRY ROBERTS, son of Hugh and Alice A. Roberts, the father being of Welsh-Quaker descent and the mother a combination of Scotch-Irish and Pennsylvania German elements, is emphatically self-taught, owing his position in life very largely to his own exertions and to his indefatigable energy and application.

He was born at Wilmington, Delaware, June 18, 1843. He attended the private school of Miss Mary Mahaffy in that city, and for a few months in each year the ordinary country schools of that section, the family having meantime made several successive removals to the vicinity of Christiana (locally known as “Christen”), in New Castle county, in that state, and later to Scott’s Mills, in Cecil county, Maryland, the last named location being about seventeen miles from Wilmington.

During his boyhood days he engaged in the ordinary duties of farm life,-ploughing, harrowing, planting, cultivating, hoeing and harvesting the crops that were produced on the farm on which the family made their home. Hugh Roberts (father) was a miller by trade, and a Pennsylvanian by birth. About the year 1840, having learned his trade with his brother, Spencer, at the historic Townsend-Roberts mill on the stream crossing Stenton avenue, known as one branch of the Wingohocking creek, named from a famous Indian chief of William Penn’s time who lived on its banks, Mr. Roberts had come to Wilmington to obtain employment in the far-famed Brandywine Mills, operated at that time by William Lea and by the Prices and Tatnalls, well-known business men of that day, whose descendants are still numerous in Delaware. There Hugh Roberts became acquainted with Alice Anna, daughter of John and Margaret (Stotsenburg) Gallagher. The acquaintance developed into something stronger than mere friendship and their marriage followed on August 8, 1842, being performed by Friends’ ceremony in the presence of John M. Scott, mayor of Philadelphia. In due time the couple were surrounded by a family, Charles H. being the oldest child and early developing strong traits of individuality, inherited from ancestors on both sides of the family.

Hugh Roberts was a man considerably above the average in culture and intelligence. He was denied to some extent those blessings of education which are so generally diffused in this day, but he overcame these obstacles to the acquisition of knowledge by a course of persistent self-study that gave him mental acquirements which, supplemented by natural good sense and native shrewdness, caused him to be regarded by the community in which he lived as a man of superior attainments. He was strongly attached to the principles of the Society of Friends, of which his ancestors for eight or ten generations had been members. A Friend by principle and conviction, he endeavored to live in accordance with the guidance of the Light Within which is and always has been the distinguishing tenet of Friends. Removing from the Maryland farm which he had sold, in 1861, at the breaking out of the Rebellion, he returned to Pennsylvania, the state of birth, locating on the farm of his uncle, Thomas Pim Spencer, in Lower Makefield township, Bucks county, on which he had been brought up as a boy and from which he went to Germantown to learn the trade of a miller. After a sojourn of two years in Bucks county, Hugh Roberts removed to Philadelphia, and thence after one year to Montgomery county in which he remained for the next thirty years or until his death at Norristown on August 23, 1894, at the age of seventy-three years. His earlier years in Montgomery county were passed in Gwynedd on the old Ellis farm, situated at the junction of the state township line roads, adjoining the Singerly homestead, and overlooking the beautiful valley of the Wissahickon. In 1882, having sold his property in Gwynedd, Hugh Roberts removed to Norristown and engaged in business as a builder in which he accumulated a competency, spending his later days in comparative retirement, enjoying the fruits of a long and well-spent life. His widow survived him nearly eight years, dying at the residence of her son, Ellwood Roberts, April 10, 1902, in the eighty-third year of her age. Having survived all the friends of her youth, and retaining all her faculties undimmed to the latest moment of her life, she passed peacefully away honored and respected by all who knew her.

Charles H. Roberts, having qualified himself by laborious study for the position, began teaching in 1862 in Bucks county and later continued that occupation in the public schools of Philadelphia for a number of years, closing at the Columbia school, Holmesburg, in 1870. Having made several trips to the west, spending the winters of 1863 and 1864 at Mount Carmel, in Wabash county, Illinois, where an aunt of his mother, Elizabeth (Stotsenburg) Hawley, resided, he early became imbued with the idea that he would make his future home in that section of the country. In the meantime he married, March 25, 1865, Sarah Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel and Louisa (Blakely) Straling, of Oxford Valley, in Bucks county. In the autumn of 1878 the family removed to Yankton, Dakota, where the resided for several years, his time being spent partly in the occupation of teaching and partly in preparation for the practice of law, to which he was admitted in 1880. About 1871 the couple received appointments at Sac and Fox Indian Agency under the care of Friends, at Great Nemaha in Richardson County, Nebraska, he holding the position of Indian agent on the Indian reservation. His experience in this position was as varied as it was interesting, but did not appear to prevent him from finally deciding upon making his home west of the Mississippi where he resided about twenty-five years, returning to the East in 1903.

Having adopted the legal profession, Charles H. Roberts removed, in 1885, to Sioux City, Iowa, and in 1895 to Kansas City, Missouri. During the residence of the family in the east the following children were born: Alice Anna, born in Bayberry, Philadelphia county, Pennsylvania, April 16, 1866; Hugh, born in Byberry, January 8, 1868; and Samuel, born at Lansdale, Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, August 1, 1871. Their youngest child, Louisa Elizabeth, was born at Sioux City, Iowa, September 23, 1886.

During the residence of the family at Green Island, in the Missouri river near Yankton, they had a remarkable experience, the great flood of the spring of 1881 sweeping away their house and its contents, together with those of all of their neighbors, and exposing them for several days and nights to almost unheard-of danger. The flood was due to an ice-jam which formed some distance up the river and suddenly broke upon the doomed town, giving them no time for escape. The Roberts family, with others of the vicinity, were compelled to take refuge on the roof of one of the houses which was built upon the highest ground, they having no choice but to remain six days and nights until the waters had somewhat subsided, and they were able to make their way to the river bank opposite Yankton over the cakes of ice which had been partly connected, because freezing weather had in the meantime set in. Contrary to their expectations, all were saved, but, having lost all their household effects, they were, in a measure, compelled to begin life anew, with the aid of relatives and friends in the east as well as in the west. During the exposure on the pinacle of the roof, the members of the family had their ears, fingers or toes frozen, and suffered unspeakable terror from being in momentary danger of being swept away by the waters of the fierce Missouri, more terrible than ever in the time of the spring ice floods. The night previous to their final escape from their unpleasant predicament, the whole party essayed to reach land by means of boats, but owing to the fact that the water was rapidly freezing, they were obliged to return to their temporary ark of refuge to wait until the ice was thick enough to bear their weight, so that their deliverance could be accomplished in that way. The boat in which was the oldest son, Hugh, then about thirteen years of age, did not return, and the rest of the party knew not but what he had perished by the capsizing of the boat or otherwise, for several weeks. It developed finally however, that his boat was able to reach an island in the river some miles above and later he rejoined the rest of the family and all reached Yankton safely, after two or three weeks’ delay on account of the continued high water. The reunion of all nearly a month after the destruction of the town, was a happy conclusion of the terrible experience, which can better be imagined than described.

Of the children, Alice Anna studied in schools taught by her father, including the Friends’ school, at Salem, New Jersey, which he taught for several years in the late ‘60s and the early ‘70s, and elsewhere, and commenced teaching in Iowa at the age of fifteen years, following that occupation with considerable success, holding the responsible position of principal of public schools in Sioux City, and teaching later in Kansas City. In June, 1899, she located in Norristown, making her home with her uncle, Ellwood Roberts, and teaching the Friends’ school at Media one year, and then securing an appointment as clerk of the census bureau at Washington, where she rendered very efficient services in connection with the collection and tabulation of the twelfth enumeration of the inhabitants of the United States, their occupations, etc. She was married December 23, 1903, to Charles H. Brown, of New York, but resides in Chicago.

Hugh Roberts, second child of Charles H. and Sarah E. Roberts, studied law with his father in Sioux City and engaged in active practice in that and neighboring states. His sketch is given elsewhere in this volume.

Samuel Roberts, third child, studied pharmacy in Sioux City, and obtained employment at Lemars, Iowa, where he finally purchased a drug store and carried on the business successfully for a number of years, later engaging in the occupation of traveling salesman for a prominent New York drug firm. He married, March 21, 1902, Edith Lillian Storey, of Fort Dodge, Iowa, the couple taking up their residence in Chicago.

Louisa Elizabeth, youngest child of Charles H. and Sarah Elizabeth Roberts, attended the public schools of Sioux City and Kansas City, Missouri, graduating from the high school in the latter city, in May, 1902.

During his legal practice in Iowa, Missouri and neighboring states, Charles H. Roberts became identified with many cases of importance. The firm consisted of himself and his son Hugh the greater part of the time. Their practice was made up of civil as well as criminal cases, they being fortunate in winning success even where the most apparently insurmountable obstacles were encountered. One notable case was that of Pollard and Harris, two colored men who were charged with murder, convicted and sentenced to be hanged. The firm of Roberts & Roberts, was engaged by the defendants too late to secure their acquittal but their counsel immediately entered upon efforts almost superhuman, devoted to saving their clients from the gallows in the shadow of which they seemingly stood. Every resource known to the legal profession was exhausted in this efforts, reprieve after reprieve being obtained, motions for re-hearings made and argued, adverse decisions serving only to rekindle the zeal of attorneys who were resolved to leave nothing undone that promised to bring safety to the accused men, whose lives were at least temporarily in their keeping. The Friends’ principles of opposition to capital punishment served as an additional stimulus to the zeal naturally characterizing the lawyer who labors in behalf of those unjustly condemned to death, as in this case. Father and son, working together in behalf of humanity, finally had the satisfaction of securing a commutation of the death penalty by William Joel Stone to the punishment of imprisonment for fifty years. This case is only a sample of many others in which the firm labored with the greatest energy to secure relief for unfortunate clients, and nearly always with a surprising measure of success.

The practice of the firm involved frequent and tedious journeys into other states, among entire strangers, notably in the Brandau case, at Rosedale, Bolivar county, Mississippi, where they secured by legal resorts, possession of a large plantation which was unjustly withheld from the rightful heirs, but which, after long and tedious litigation, involving much labor, was restored to the proper persons.

After the death of his mother in 1902, various considerations induced the senior member of the firm to leave Kansas City with the view of returning to the east and spending his remaining days in the vicinity of his boyhood home. He accordingly removed to Norristown and began preparations for admission to the Philadelphia bar, to which he was admitted on the 27th day of June, 1903.