McRoberts, Josiah

Born: 1819-06-12 Monroe County, Illinois

Died: 1885-06-02 Joliet, Illinois

Flourished: 1853 to 1885 Joliet, Illinois

Josiah McRoberts, attorney and public official, studied in Missouri before graduating from the law school of Transylvania University. He then read law under his brother, Samuel McRoberts, and Abraham Lincoln served as one of his examiners when he applied for admission to the bar in 1841. McRoberts practiced law in Danville and he and Lincoln encountered each other at trial in Vermilion County Circuit Court in the 1840s. After running unsuccessfully for the Illinois House of Representatives in 1844, McRoberts was elected as a Democrat to represent Champaign and Vermilion counties in the Illinois Senate, 1846-47, and Vermilion County in 1849. In 1852 he was named to the Illinois Democratic State Central Committee. That same year Governor Joel A. Matteson appointed McRoberts state trustee of the Illinois & Michigan Canal, a position he held for four years. About 1853 he relocated to Joliet, where he entered into a law partnership with Francis Goodspeed. McRoberts married Martha A. Moore (Moores) in 1844 and Gertrude H. Shoemaker in 1849 and had children.

W. W. Stevens, Past and Present of Will County, Illinois (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1907), 185, 200; For Lincoln’s cases involving McRoberts, search Participant, “McRoberts, Josiah,” Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis, et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), http://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org; John Clayton, comp., The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 214, 216; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Vermilion County, 22 October 1844; Will County, 9 August 1849, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Theodore C. Pease, ed., Illinois Election Returns, 1818-1848, vol. 18 of Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1923), 402, 410, 541; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Danville, Vermilion County, IL, n.p.; Prominent Democrats of Illinois: A Brief History of the Rise and Progress of the Democratic Party of Illinois (Chicago: Democrat, 1899), 20; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Joliet, Will County, IL, 461; The Chicago Daily Tribune, 3 June 1885, 3:6; Gravestone, Oakwood Cemetery, Joliet, IL.