My Genealogy Hound

HUGH ROBERTS, a well known builder of Norristown, was a native of Branchtown, in Philadelphia county, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Hugh and Sarah (Spencer) Roberts. He was born 8th mo. 5, 1821, nearly four months after the death of his father. His mother married again, and he was reared by his father’s sister, Mary Roberts, in the home of his grandfather, Amos Roberts, on Fifth street, near Arch, Philadelphia. When he was about eight years of age he was sent to the farm of his mother’s brother, Thomas P. Spencer, in Lower Makefield township, Bucks county, Pennsylvania, where he spent the next eight years, attending the schools of the vicinity. At the age of sixteen years he went to his brother, Spencer Roberts, at the family homestead and mill, the second oldest in the state, where he learned the milling trade. In 1840 he went to Wilmington, Delaware, and was employed for several years at the Brandywine flour mills of the Leas and Canbys.

He married, 8th mo. 8, 1842, Alice A. Gallagher, daughter of John and Margaret (Stotsenburg) Gallagher, of that city. Their children: Charles H., Ellwood (editor of this work), and Mary, wife of Samuel Livezey, of Norristown, Pennsylvania. (See sketches of each of their children elsewhere in this work).

Hugh Roberts followed farming in Delaware and Maryland from 1852 to 1861, when he removed to the Thomas Spencer farm in Bucks county, Pennsylvania; in 1863 to Philadelphia, and in 1864 to Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, where he spent the remainder of his life, residing on his farm in Gwynedd until 1882, when he removed to Norristown, where he was engaged in building and real estate operations until his death, which occurred 8th mo. 23, 1894, in his seventy-fourth year. He was a man of the highest integrity and of superior intelligence. He was devoted to the principles of the Society of Friends, living a consistent and honorable life, loved and honored by all who knew him. In politics he was an earnest Republican, but never sought office. He was largely self-taught, and was all his life very fond of reading and study.

His wife survived him nearly eight years, making her home with her son, Ellwood Roberts, at Main and George streets, Norristown, where she died, 4th mo. 10, 1902, in the eighty-third year of her age. Both were buried at Friends’ burying ground at Plymouth Meeting.

Alice A. Roberts was a woman of much more than ordinary intelligence and ability. Her home was the center of her life, and she did all that was possible to make it attractive to her husband, children and friends. Her one thought through life was how to be useful to those around her, self-sacrifice and devotion to duty being characteristic of her through her long life. She was a model of what a wife and mother should be, and transmitted to her offspring many qualities which have been valuable to them in life.