JOHN M. ROBERTS
In 1870 John M. Roberts bought eighty acres of land in Edna township, Cass county, and the next year he brought his family and settled on section 32, and partly improved his farm. He has since purchased three hundred and twenty acres of good land, all improved, and has fine cattle and other stock. He is a native of England, and was born on the 9th of October, 1841. When he was about eleven months of age his parents came to America, and located in Pennsylvania, where they lived six years, when they came to Wisconsin and located in Lafayette county, where he remained some time when he went to Shelby county, Illinois. He attended the Seminary at Shelbyville, and a commercial college until 1865, when he was engaged in farming in the summer and teaching in the winter. He was married in 1866, to Frances E. Shepard. Her father Henry W., was a native of Massachusetts. They have four children living: Jessie Lolo, now a student in the Normal School at Dexter; Lulu May, Frank H. and Ralph S.
Contributed by Lisa Varnes-Rex from "History of Cass County, Iowa. Together With Sketches of its Towns, Villages and Townships, Educational, Civil, Military and Political History: Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Old Settlers and Representative Citizens." Springfield, Ill.: Continental Historical Company, 1884, pp. 757.
