S. G. Roberts
S. G. Roberts, farmer, stock raiser, and physician. The subject of this sketch is a descendant of John Roberts, who, together with his two brothers, James and Henry Roberts, emigrated to the Colony of Virginia about the period of the English Revolution, in 1688. They were natives of South Wales.
William Roberts, son of John Roberts, referred to above, was the great grandfather of S. C. Roberts. He was born in 1724. His children consisted of eight sons: John, Henry, Azariah, Nehemiah, Cornelius, William, Hanley, and Miiior William Roberts, the sixth son, and grandfather of S. C. Roberts.
Minor William Roberts was born in Culpepper County, Virginia, in the year 1762. He was a soldier in the war for American Independence, and held a captain's commission at its close. lie was a first cousin to General Andrew Jackson (their mothers being sisters). He was married to Hannah Fink, March 26, 1787. The certificate of said marriage is now in possession of S. C. Roberts, and is very highly prized by him as an heirloom of the family! Hannah Fink was of German descent, but was born in Virginia. Her father, Henry Fink, and her brother, Henry Fink, Jr., were killed by the Indians at or near Clarksburg, Virginia, soon after her marriage to William Roberts. They raised twelve children: John B., Rebecca (Vanmeter), Henry, Hezekiah, Susan (Malone), Daniel, WiUiam, James D., Melinda (Mackey), Isaac, Elijah W., and Hannah (Search). John, Henry, and Hezekiah Roberts, were soldiers in the war with Great Britain, in 1812, serving to the end of the war. Soon after the marriage of William and Hannah Roberts, they emigrated to Bourbon County, Kentucky, and in 1798 to Ross County, Ohio, twelve miles east of Chillicothe, on the waters of the Kinnikinnick, where they lived on a farm entered from the government. They both died in the year 1835.
Isaac Roberts, the tenth child of William and Hannah Roberts, was the father of S. C. Roberts. He was born at the old Roberts homestead, September 3, 1804, and was married to Mercy Chedister, December 22, 1825. They had a family of eleven children. Two died in infancy. S. C. Roberts, subject of this sketch, was the third child, born August 31, 1832. The next was W. E. Roberts. Wilmeth A. (Barnes), Margaret, Anna M. (Miller), Jacob U., James D., Harriet E., and Isaac A. Roberts. Jacob U., James D., and Isaac A. Roberts, served as soldiers in the Union army during the late rebellion.
S. C. Roberts graduated as a doctor of medicine, with the highest honors, at Starling Medical College, Columbus, Ohio, in the spring of 1853, and was married on May 10th, of the same year, to Miss Mary E. Bowen, of Bainbridge, Ross County, Ohio, that being her native place. Her parents came from Martinsburg, Virginia. They lived happily together until July 4, 1877, the date of her death. They had six living children at the time of her death: Anna M., born April 16, 1854; Charles L., born January 23, 1860; Frank K., born April 8, 1864; John I., born December 4, 1866; Margaret A., born September 18, 1869; and Samuel C.,born March 31, 1872. Anna M. Roberts, the eldest child, died March 29, 1881, after a lingering illness of more than two years, having contracted a cold that caused her death. She was a highly cultivated young lady for one of her years, and had much more than ordinary talent as an artist, besides having received a collegiate education at Delaware, Ohio. Her memory is almost worshiped by her father, sister, and brothers. Every room in her father's house bears evidence of her superior artistic skill. She was loved by all her large circle of friends and acquaintances.
Isaac Roberts, father of Dr. S. C. Roberts, subject of this sketch, died at Jackson Court House, January 18, 1873, of pneumonia, having lived there nearly twenty years. He was a lawyer by profession, and was appointed commissioner of the board of enrollment in that district daring the late rebellion, and also represented that county in the Ohio Legislature in the years 1863-64. His wife, Mercy Roberts, died May 25, 1869.
Dr. S. C. Roberts, our subject, became identified with this county in November, 1868. He, together with the Rev. R. Pitzer, who were then both residents of Bainbridge, Ross County, Ohio, purchased of Dr. C. A. Trimble, eleven hundred and eight acres of land, situated in Jasper and Concord townships, immediately next the Clinton County line, what was known as the Trimble prairie lands, bought at a very early day by Ex-Governor Trimble, of Hillsboro (father of C. A. Trimble). Roberts and Pitzer paid for said lands fifty thousand dollars, and divided it equally between them as to acreage, each residing on their respective parts of said lands. R. Pitzer sold his land several years since, and now resides at Washington. Dr. Roberts still remains on what was his part of the divide in the land.
Before coming to this county, he practiced medicine and surgery twelve years, very successfully, at Bainbridge, Ross County, Ohio; and since he has resided in this county he has been a physician and farmer, making a specialty of broom corn for several years. But for the past two years he has been engaged in general farming, and has also given some attention to the raising of fine stock—short-horn cattle and Berkshire hogs—having raised some of the finest and best ever produced in the county, with pedigrees equal to anything in the United States.
From R. S. Dills' History of Fayette County