Lee County Biographies
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BENJAMIN ROBERTS
Benjamin Roberts has been a resident of Lee
County since 1868 and for the greater part of the time
since the beginning of his active career he has been
connected with agricultural interests here, owning and
operating one hundred and thirty-seven and one-half
acres of excellent land on sections 11 and 2, Wyoming
township. He was born in Pavilion, Kendall County,
Illinois. October 8, 1860, and is a son of H. H. and
Elizabeth (Scott) Roberts. The father was a carpenter
by trade, following this occupation in Pennsylvania
for a number of years. In 1848 he came west to
Illinois and settled in Kendall County, where he
engaged in farming. In 1868 he moved to Lee County and
bought the farm now owned by the subject of this
review, paying forty dollars an acre for land now
worth three hundred dollars per acre. He passed away
in 1868 and was survived by his wife until 1905. Both
are buried in the East Paw Paw cemetery. They were the
parents of eleven children: Crawford, who died in the
Union Army during the Civil War; Annie, the wife of R.
M. Morgan, a farmer in Oklahoma; Jennie, who married
John Wolcott, a farmer in Kendall County, Illinois;
Henry, who died in 1910 and is buried in the Wyoming
cemetery; Emma, the wife of Joe Agler, who is engaged
in farming near Wakefield, Nebraska; Etta, who became
the wife of Henry Litz and died in Abilene, Kansas, in
1888; Lizzie, who married Mathew Goodyear, a farmer at
Philip, South Dakota; Benjamin, of this review;
George, a farmer in Wayne, Nebraska; Mary, the wife of
James Britton, county judge of Wayne County,Nebraska;
and Della, the wife of George Hicks, a clothier in Paw
Paw, Illinois.
Benjamin Roberts acquired his education in the
public schools of Paw Paw, laying aside his books at
the age of seventeen. He afterward assisted with the
work of the farm until he was twenty-two and then
became a clerk in a drug store. He was later for eight
years connected with the clothing business in Paw Paw.
He purchased the homestead at auction and has since
carried forward the work of its improvement and
development. He engages in mixed farming and under his
able management his property has greatly increased in
value, being now one of the finest farms in the
township.
In Paw Paw, on the 16th of June, 1891, Mr.
Roberts married Miss Pearl Carnahan, a daughter of
John and Malvina (Cole) Carnahan, the former an
engineer and farmer and one of the pioneers in Lee
County. He now makes his home in Iowa, having survived
his wife since 1907. She passed away when she was
sixty years of age and is buried in Saybrook,
Illinois. Mr. and Mrs. Roberts have two children: H.
Louise, a graduate of the Paw Paw high school and now
a student in Lake Forest College; and Benjamin E.,
attending high school.
Mr. Roberts is a member of the Baptist church, in
which he has been deacon and Sunday School
superintendent for fifteens years. He is connected
fraternally with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows
and the Modern Woodmen of America and gives his
political allegiance to the republican party. He has
served with credit and ability in various positions of
trust and responsibility, having been alderman of Paw
Paw for three terms, street commissioner for two terms
and also school director. He is a man of many
excellent traits of character which he evidences in
all the relations of life, holding the esteem and
respect of his neighbors as a progressive businessman
and upright citizen.
Contributed by Martha Fuller
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