Roberts, Edmund

Born: 1785 Farmington, New Hampshire

Died: 1847-03-28 Springfield, Illinois

Flourished: 1832-1847 Springfield, Illinois

Having moved to western Pennsylvania as a young man, in 1810, Roberts concluded a flatboat voyage down the Ohio River by settling first in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, and soon afterward at Kaskaskia, which was then the capital of Illinois. Roberts engaged in the mercantile business with Thomas Mather and James L. Lamb, which frequently took him back to the eastern states. On one of those trips in 1819, in Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania, he married his business partner's sister, Susan Lamb, and together they had eight children. In 1832, Roberts moved his family to Springfield, Illinois. He served as a commissioner for the Illinois & Michigan Canal and the State Bank of Illinois, and he sat on the Board of Trustees of McKendree College. In 1837, Roberts was one of the prominent citizens who pledged funding to secure the move of the state capital from Vandalia to Springfield.

John Carroll Power and S. A. Power, History of the Early Settlers of Sangamon County, Illinois (Springfield, IL: Edwin A. Wilson, 1876), 620-21; Gravestone, Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield, IL; An Act to Incorporate the Subscribers to the Bank of the State of Illinois; Bond of Thomas Mather and Others for the State of Illinois.