Background

Oran Milo Roberts was born in July 1815 in Laurens District, South Carolina. He was the son of Obe Roberts, of Welsh ancestry, and Margaret Ewing. From South Carolina, his father removed with his family to Ashville, in the mountain region of northern Alabama, where his father died when Oran was but ten years of age. Soon thereafter the widow moved to a small farm on which her son labored until he was sixteen.

Education

Oran's resolve to go to college at 16 was enabled to carry into execution with the financial assistance of his brother-in-law, Robert Bourland, a blacksmith, and with the tutoring of Ralph P. Lowe, afterward a member of the supreme court of Iowa, who prepared him to enter the university.

In 1836, at the age of twenty-one, Oran graduated from the University of Alabama. He at once began the study of law with Judge Ptolemy Harris, whose children he tutored to defray his expenses. Later he read law in the office of William P. Chilton, who was subsequently a member of the supreme court of Alabama.

Career

Oran Milo Roberts was admitted to the bar on September 22, 1837, and for four years practicing law, first in Talladega and later in Ashville, Alabama. During this time he served one term in the Alabama legislature from 1838 until 1840 to which he was elected when but twenty-three years of age.

In 1841 Oran answered the call of the new West and moved to Texas and took up the practice of law at San Augustine, near the eastern border of the infant republic.

Although this little city then had one of the strongest bars in the country, young Roberts rose rapidly and was soon riding an extensive circuit of eastern Texas counties along with the district judge and the lawyers of established practice. On February 6, 1844, a little more than two years after his arrival in Texas, President Houston appointed him district attorney.

Two years later Roberts became the judge of the Fifth Texas Judicial District, eventually resigning to return to his law practice. This position he held until 1855.

On February 1, 1856, he was elected associate justice of the supreme court of Texas to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Judge A. S. Lipscomb.

Late in 1861 Oran Roberts resigned from the court and early in 1862 he raised a regiment, the 11th Texas Infantry, and became its colonel. For two years he served in the army with distinction, but upon the death of Chief Justice Royall T. Wheeler, Roberts, while still with his command in Louisiana, was elected chief justice in 1864. This office he held until the collapse of the Confederate cause in 1865. He was chairman of the judiciary committee in the constitutional convention of 1866. In August of that year, he was elected to the United States Senate but was not allowed to take his seat.

In 1878, while still chief justice, Roberts was elected governor, and in 1880 he was reelected.

In 1881, while serving as governor, he published 'A Description of Texas, Its Advantages and Resources,' a booklet of 133 pages.

Upon his retirement from the governor's office, in 1883, Roberts served as professor of law at the University of Texas. He resigned from this position in 1893 and died in Austin on May 19, 1898.

In 1890 Oran Roberts published 'The Elements of Texas Pleading,' and two years later 'Our Federal Relations, from a Southern View of Them.'

In 1898, there appeared from his pen the political history of Texas down to 1895, published as the first 325 pages of Volume II of D. G. Wooten's 'Comprehensive History of Texas.'

Roberts also contributed chapters on Texas to Clement A. Evans's 'Confederate Military History.'

Achievements

• As governor Oran Milo Roberts adopted as his motto "Pay as you go," and as a result, the financial condition of the state was greatly improved. The outstanding achievement of his administration as governor was the establishment of the University of Texas, which opened its doors in the fall of 1883. He advocated sweeping fiscal reforms, reduced debt, and increased the public school fund.
  
  Oran's historical contributions include a large section in D. G. Wooton's 'Comprehensive History of Texas' and chapters about Texas and Texans in C. A. Evan's 'Confederate Military History.'

Works

More photos

• book

  • Confederate Military History of Texas

    (Situated farther west than any other Confederate state, T...)

  • Our Federal Relations From a Southern View of Them 1892
  • A Description of Texas 1881
  • The History And Burden Of Taxation 1889
  • A Description of Texas, Its Advantages and Resources
  • Our Federal Relations From a Southern View of Them
  • Faculty Address, June 17, 1890: The Relation of Public Education to the Government of the State of Texas 1890
  • The Quarterly of the Texas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 1: July, 1897, to April, 1898

Politics

Roberts was an outspoken proponent of states' rights, was instrumental in calling the Secession Convention in Austin in January 1861, and was unanimously elected its president. He was among the leaders who succeeded in passing the ordinance removing Texas from the Union.

Personality

Oran's opinions showed a capacity for research and a power of analysis that marks him as one of the greatest judges the state of Texas has ever had.

He was said to have been admired by friends and adversaries alike for his integrity, sincerity, and honor, and was remembered as a just and impartial judge, a firm and conservative governor, and a kind and painstaking law professor.

Connections

In December 1837, shortly after having been admitted to the bar, Oran Roberts had married Frances Wycliffe Edwards, daughter of Major Peter Edwards, of Ashville. They lived together until her death in 1883 and reared a family of six children, a seventh having died in infancy. In December 1887 he was married at Tyler to Catherine Elizabeth Harding, widow of one of his earliest friends in Texas, Colonel John P. Border, who had fought in the battle of San Jacinto and had been a colonel in the Confederate army.

Father:

Obe Roberts

Mother:

Margaret Ewing Roberts

late wife:

Frances Wycliffe Edwards Roberts

1819-1883

Wife:

Catherine Elizabeth Harding Roberts

1829-1920

Daughter:

Sarah Jane Jones

1839-1909

Daughter:

Oba Roberts

1844-1900

Son:

Robert Pinckney Roberts

1846-1895

Daughter:

Margaret Eliza Roberts Spain

1851-1945

Son:

Peter Edwards Roberts

1853-1903

Daughter:

Francis Una Roberts Halverson

1856-1883

Son:

Oran Milo Roberts

1861-1935

References

• Biographical Dictionary of the Confederacy
  1977
• Biographical Encyclopedia of Texas
  2018