Family Tree Maker's Genealogy Site: User Home Page Book: My Grandparent's Grandparent's Grandparents: Descendants Richard Roberts and Elizabeth Montgomery of Granville County, N.C.

Prev Page

Prev Item

Contents

Index

Go to Page

Home Page

Next Item

Next Page

Page 152 of 417

1302 Descendants of Richard Roberts & Elizabeth Lynden Montgomery

Generation No. 2

2. DOCTOR WILLIS² ROBERTS (RICHARD¹) was born 1779 in South Carolina, and died December 23, 1853 in Mobile, Mobile County, Alabama. He married ASCENITH ALEXANDER 1801 in Wilkes County, Georgia, daughter of SAMUEL ALEXANDER and SUSANNAH BUSH. She was born June 25, 1784 in Wilkes County, Georgia, and died February 03, 1833 in Mobile, Alabama.

Notes for DOCTOR WILLIS ROBERTS:
Contributors of Doctor Willis Roberts Descendants; Ray Isbell and Dr. Rhett Pringle Walker.

Birthdate 1779? S.C. or 1 JUN 1780, Georgia, either birthdate makes this Willis Roberts' birth too late to be an actual child of Richard Roberts, who passed away in 1772. Is this the same Willis mentioned in the LWT of Richard Roberts? If so, what is the relationship, grandson?

1807, Laid out Putnam County, Georgia. Part added to Jones, 1810. Named after General Israel Putnam. The Oconee and Little rivers are the chief streams.
Eastonton is the county town, 22 miles from Milledgeville.
Amongst the early settlers of this county were; Wm. Wilkins, Benjamin Williamson, John Lamar, Wm. Turner, and Willis Roberts. http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/ga/bios/putnam.txt

1813 Tax Roll Putnam County Georgia,
Capt. Whitaker's District:
Roberts, Abaraham
Capt. Jacob Lindsay's District:
Roberts, John
Roberts, (or Roberds)William
Roberts, James (Jones, Hancock)
Lamar, John
Capt. Francis Williams's District
Lamar, James
http://www.geocities.com/bevmahon/Childs/Childs_-_John_1813_Putnam_GA_Tax_Roll.htm

1818, Willis Roberts migrated from Putnam County, Georgia to Claiborne County, Alabama, and later to Mobile County, Alabama.

Willis Roberts was co-owner of a mercantile store at Cahaba/Cahawba, former capital of Alabama, in 1819-20, with Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, who later was the second President of the Republic of Texas. Lamar stayed with Willis Roberts often, and that is why these Roberts were so involved in early Texas history. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/RR/fro19.html

About "Old Cahawba", Where the Alabama and Cahaba Rivers Join is the site of Alabama's first capital (1820-1826). Once a bustling community. Shortly after the Civil War Cahawba became a ghost town. Now it is an archeological park containing relics of an old Indian village and remnants of the first Spanish settlers. In 1818, Dallas county was formed from Montgomery County, Cahawba was named the county seat. In 1819, The town was incorporated and named as Alabama's Capital .

1819, Willis Roberts was the personal secretary of Gov. Bibb, first governor of Alabama.
The Senate Journal contains quote from brief note by Willis Roberts Thursday, Oct. 28, 1819.
http://www.legislature.state.al.us/misc/history/acts_and_journals/Senate%20Journals%20Oct-Dec%201819/Page5_Oct28.html

1820, November 23, Thursday, Source: State of Alabama, House Journal
Jack Ferrell Ross (aka Jack Ferrill Ross) was the first state treasurer of Alabama, but Willis Roberts might have been, but for the lack of 20 votes. Both Jack F. Ross and Willis Roberts died in Mobile, Alabama, and had lived previously in Cahaba and St. Stephens both former state capitals. They were both in Claiborne also. Capt. James L. Abbot III, great-grandson of Jack F. Ross, later lived owned
Willis Roberts' home at 910 Government Street, Mobile, and died there in 1988.

1820, Dec. 11, Alabama Senate Journal, Willis Roberts - survey expenses listed.

1828, Dr. Willis Roberts, in addition to being a surgeon, and head of the Mobile City Hospital later (1830), was a skilled surveyor and cartographer. He plotted an early map of Spring Hill in 1828 and another early map of Mobile in 1835, (mentioned in several histories of Mobile).

1830, Dr. Willis Roberts was first superintendent of the new city hospital built at Broad and St. Anthony Streets in 1833 (still standing). He owned property on Broad St. and Government St. a couple of blocks from the hospital and built a house there 1837-40, a portion believed to still be standing as a wing on his son Joel's house at 910 Government. St. A portrait of Dr. Roberts c1835 is in the book "ALABAMA PORTRAITS" by the Colonial Dames (1961?) and now owned by Dr. Howard S. L. Walker Jr. of Dauphin St., Mobile, a great-great-grandson.

1850 Census, Mobile County, Alabama. Quote from Ray Isbell;
"Mirabeau B. Lamar (former president of the Republic of Texas and later U.S. Minister to Argentina) is shown in Mobile, Alabama in the household of Joel Abbott Roberts (b.1813) & his father Willis Roberts (b. 1779), at what is now 910 Government Street, Mobile, Mobile County, Alabama:"

Roberts, J.A. 37 m Geo. (Joel Abbott Roberts)
", Mary 28 f ALa. (Mary Taylor Bolles Roberts)
", Laura 9 f Ala
", Willis 7 m Ala
", Ella 4 f Ala (should this say Eber Boles Roberts?)
", Mary 2/12 f Ala
", Lamar 2/12 m Ala. *******
", Willis 72 m So. Car.
", Reuben 32 m Geo.
Lamar, M.B. 50 m Geo. (Mirabeau B. Lamar) ****

Willis Roberts and sons; Samuel Alexander Roberts, "The Secretary of State of Texas" and Joel Abbott Roberts owned several thousand acres in Texas.

Burial Site: Church Street Cemetery, Mobile, Alabama.

2003, April 3, Quote from Ray Isbell;
"I've been to that cemetery personally and transcribed the graves myself. Asenath Roberts' name is clearly written Asenath, not Arsenath."

Asenath Roberts 25 JUN 1784 - 3 FEB 1833
Emily R. Roberts 16 Jan 1816 Mobile, AL 2 Jul 1833
Willis Roberts "died December 23, 1853, age 74"

"Emily is buried between them. The markers are very old, with odd-looking rounded sarcophogus-style raised tombs ground. Also in the same plot are Thomas Mather (2nd husband of Willis' daughter
Olivea) and her son Francis Walsingham "Mather" (Taylor)."

More About DOCTOR WILLIS ROBERTS:
Burial: Church Street Cemetery, Mobile, Alabama
Occupation: Doctor

Notes for ASCENITH ALEXANDER:
Variour Spellings: Asenath, Ascenith, Asenith,

DAR records spell her name Asenath and show her as the daughter of Samuel Alexander Sr. and Olivia Wooten, though Olivia Wooten Alexander was at least 54 when Asenath Alexander Roberts was born in 1784.

Ascenith Alexander's Actual Parents? Theory submitted by Roberts/Alexander Researcher:\\

"I think Samuel Alexander Jr. and his first wife unknown (perhaps Walsingham?) must be the parents of Asenath Alexander Roberts, and perhaps Asenath went to live with her grandparents when her mother died and before Samuel Alexander Jr. married (2) Susannah Bryan Bush. That's my own belief, providing the first wife was Asenath's mother and not Susannah. (There is so much contradictory information and many wrong dates on the internet concerning Susannah, the Bryans & Bushes, & Alexanders, so it's hard to theorize further.) Also, Samuel Alexander SR. and Olivia Wooten Alexander did indeed have a daughter named Asenath/Asanith, etc., but according to Alexander researchers, she was born about 1760."

Willis Roberts & Asenath Alexander Roberts' first two children were:
1. Olivea Alexander Roberts
2. Samuel Alexander Roberts
"Quite something special to honor both maternal parents by naming the first two children for them, and so I'm thinking it's for the maternal grandparents who raised her. "

Asenath Alexander married Dr. Willis Roberts and moved to Mobile, Alabama, lived at 910 Government Street, sold to Elizabeth Taylor Bolles. She died in 1853. Dr. Roberts was very wealthy and owned a great deal of property. Part of the house that he built still stands. He had charge of the Mobile City Hospital which opened in 1830 (which also still stands). His portrait is owned by his descendants.

source:
http://www.archives.state.al.us/al_sldrs/r_list.html
Thomas McAdory Owen's Revolutionary War Soldiers in Alabama:
BEING A LIST OF NAMES, COMPILED FROM AUTHENTIC
SOURCES, OF SOLDIERS OF THE AMERICAN
REVOLUTION, WHO RESIDED
IN THE STATE OF ALABAMA
COMPILED BY THOMAS M. OWEN
Alabama Department of Archives and History, 1911.
And updated in the Alabama Historical Quarterly
Winter, 1944,
by the Alabama Department of Archives and History

ROBERTS, ASENETTE ALEXANDER, real Daughter marked by D.A.R., Mobile.—See
D.A.R. Report 1927-28, p. 121.
This is from D.A.R. Records
Note: Her tombstone at the old Church Street Cemetery in Mobile, AL. spells her name Asenath Alexander Roberts

More About ASCENITH ALEXANDER:
Burial: Church Street Cemetery, Mobile, Alabama

Children of WILLIS ROBERTS and ASCENITH ALEXANDER are:

9.	i.		OLIVEA ALEXANDER³ ROBERTS, b. 1804; d. 1888.
	ii.		SAMUEL ALEXANDER ROBERTS, b. February 13, 1809, Putnam County, Georgia; d. August 18, 1872, Bonham, Texas; m. LUCINDA MARY REED, April 08, 1842.

Notes for SAMUEL ALEXANDER ROBERTS:
ROBERTS, SAMUEL ALEXANDER (1809-1872):
Samuel Alexander Roberts, attorney and government official of the Republic of Texas, qv son of Willis and Asenath (Alexander) Roberts, was born in Putnam County, Georgia, on February 13, 1809. He was raised and educated in Georgia and in Cahaba and Mobile, Alabama, and attended the United States Military Academy, where he was a classmate of Jefferson Davis. qv He moved to Houston, Texas, in 1837, shortly after being licensed to practice law. Roberts came to Texas on the advice of Republic of Texas vice president Mirabeau B. Lamar,qv a family friend, who during 1819 and 1820 had owned a general mercantile store in partnership with Roberts's father in Cahaba. After Lamar was elected
president of the republic, Roberts received appointments to a number of government offices during the late 1830s and early 1840s. Lamar appointed Roberts notary public of Harrisburg County on January 23, 1839, secretary of the Texas legation to the United States in March 1839, acting secretary of
state on May 25, 1841, and secretary of state on September 7, 1841. On April 8, 1842, Roberts married Lucinda Mary Reed. The couple moved to Bonham, where Roberts entered a law partnership with James W. Throckmorton.
Roberts accrued real estate valued at $3,000 and three slaves by 1850. His house, called Three Groves, constructed of planed lumber hauled from Jefferson, was recognized as a showplace. Roberts was a Whig and served as a delegate to both the state and national party conventions in 1852. As the issue of slaveryqv increasingly divided the nation after 1850 and opposition to abolitionist ideas and the fear of abolitionist-inspired slave revolt spread in Texas and the South (see SLAVE INSURRECTIONS), Roberts gained some local notoriety as a defender of the "peculiar institution." In March 1859 he spoke at a proslavery town meeting in Bonham and served on a three-man local committee that drafted resolutions ordering ministers associated with the Methodist Episcopal Church, which was suspect as a result of the abolitionist statements of some northern Methodist Episcopal ministers, to cease any antislavery preaching or activity. During the Civil Warqv the training camp for Confederate soldiers at Bonham was named in Roberts's honor. His family included four children, a stepson, and two foster daughters. Roberts died in Bonham on August 18, 1872.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Randolph B. Campbell, "The Whig Party of Texas in the Elections of 1848 and 1852," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 73 (July 1969). Philip Graham, The Life and Poems of Mirabeau B. Lamar (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1938). Floy Crandall Hodge, A History of Fannin County (Hereford, Texas: Pioneer, 1966). Wesley Norton, "The Methodist Episcopal Church and the Civil Disturbances in North Texas in 1859 and 1860," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 68 (January 1965). Amelia W. Williams and Eugene C. Barker, eds., The Writings of Sam Houston, 1813-1863 (8 vols., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1938-43; rpt., Austin and New York: Pemberton Press, 1970).

Source:
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/RR/fro19.html
http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:KVY4fdX8lMgC:www.geometry.net/detail/scientists/roberts_samuel.html+Mirabeau+%22Samuel+Roberts%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

25 May 1841 - 1841 Samuel Alexander Roberts (b. 1809 - d. 1872)
(acting to 7 Sep 1841)

10.	iii.	JOEL ABBOTT ROBERTS, b. 1813, Georgia; d. August 07, 1863, Augusta, Richmond County, Georgia.
	iv.	EDITH ROBERTS, b. January 16, 1816, Georgia.
	v.	REUBEN ROBERTS, b. 1818, Georgia.

Notes for REUBEN ROBERTS:
Reuben Roberts was born in Georgia in 1818 and lived with Willis and Joel Roberts in the 1850 Census, Mobile County, Alabama, but nothing further is known of him.

11.

vi.

LAURA MELVINA ROBERTS, b. September 25, 1819, Cahaba, Dallas County, Alabama; d. August 25, 1883, Mobile, Mobile County, Alabama.

Page 152 of 417

Prev Page

Prev Item

Contents

Index

Go to Page

Home Page

Next Item

Next Page