Roberts Family (Click for Family Tree)

Tuesday’s Tip:

Use a photo as a starting point to tell the family stories.

We family historians have interviewed, researched, downloaded, copied, organized, and stayed up late nights/early mornings to find our ancestors and learn their stories. We have our family history saved as pixels, paper, and more in our brains than is probably written down. But how do we share those stories, to make them more a part of our family’s history? How can we ensure the stories will be passed to generations to come??

More importantly, how do we decide just where to start?

Photos tell us about relationships when there is more than one person in the image. Thus we can use photos as a way to think about family and friends, and as a way to limit us or give us a starting point for sharing stories. There are so many stories about so many people in our family’s history- obviously, since the number of people doubles with each generation! Sometimes it is tough to decide where to start with writing, or a new blog post. So in the near future, we will use the above image as a starting point for a series of articles about the family of John S. Roberts (1832-1922) and Elizabeth Ann (Murrell) Roberts (1835-1917), the parents of these three men.

We will also tell the story of the sister of these three, Mary Jane Roberts, and the infant son, Wilbert John Roberts (1877-1878), who died very young.

And how are we related to these folks? George Anthony Roberts was the father of Edith Mae (Roberts) [McMurray] Luck, therefore William Edward and Jason Lee were her paternal uncles, and Mary Jane her paternal aunt.

Stay tuned for more information about these ancestors and their families!

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1. Image from family treasure chest of photos and ephemera.

Click to enlarge any image. Please contact us if you would like an image in higher resolution.

Original content copyright 2013-2016 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

John Roberts was 1 of 11 children born to Jane Saylor and John S. Roberts, both originally from Kentucky. He was born 05 December, 1832 in Indiana when it was still not a very settled place. The family farmed the land in Jefferson and Ripley Counties, Indiana.

When John was 23, around 1855, he went to Illinois to work as a farmhand. There he met Elizabeth Ann Murrell, who had migrated from her birthplace in Botetourt Co., Virginia to Illinois about 1853 when she was 18. They married 08 March 1857 in Roseville, Warren Co., Illinois. They had four children in Illinois: William Edward (1858-1935), Jason Lee (1859-1940), George Anthony (1861-1939), and Mary Jane (1863-1947).

In the fall of 1868 the family of six loaded a covered wagon and migrated to Jasper County, Iowa. (Their granddaughter Edith loved to tell that story.) Here another child, Wilbert John, was born but died in infancy (1877-1878).

John and Elizabeth lived the rest of their lives in Jasper County, Iowa. They are both buried in Waveland Cemetery, Prairie City, Jasper Co., Iowa.

Notes, Sources, and References:

1) This information has also been posted on Find A Grave, Memorial #99632803 for John Roberts and Elizabeth Ann Murrell Roberts, Find A Grave Memorial# 99632804.

Please contact us if you would like a higher resolution image.

Copyright 2014 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.