Roberts County

John S. Roberts, one of the county's two namesakes, was born in Virginia in 1796, enlisted in the Tennessee militia at sixteen and fought at the Battle of New Orleans in John Coffee's regiment. He was a major in the Fredonian Rebellion of 1826, served in the siege of Bexar in 1835 and signed the Texas Declaration of Independence on March 2, 1836. A Nacogdoches merchant and land buyer, he was ruined by lawsuits that began in 1838 and spent his last years keeping a grocery and saloon in the Old Stone Fort. He died in 1871.

What the plaque says

Formed from Young and Bexar territories. Created August 21, 1876. Organized January 10, 1889. Named in honor of John S. Roberts, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, and Oran Milo Roberts, Governor of Texas, 1878-1882. County seat, Miami, to October, 1889; Parnell, to August 1, 1898, Miami, since.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Roberts County Museum — 4.5 mi
  The county museum in Miami's old Santa Fe depot, holding mammoth bones and Clovis points from a 1934 dig, in the cow town that has held a cow-calling contest since 1949.
• The Citadelle Art Museum — 16 mi
  A 1910 Baptist church saved from demolition in 1977, made into a family home filled with art, and given to Canadian in 2009 as one of the Panhandle's few art museums.
• River Valley Pioneer Museum — 16 mi
  The Hemphill County museum in Canadian, a Santa Fe division town of 1887 on the river breaks that held one of the first commercial rodeos in Texas and voted itself dry in 1903.
• Old Mobeetie Jail Museum — 17 mi
  The 1886 stone jail of the Panhandle's first county seat, the buffalo hunters' Hidetown on Sweetwater Creek that ran the courts for fifteen counties before losing its fort, railroad hopes and county seat.

More markers nearby

• Fossil Beds — 1.1 mi
• County Named for Prominent Confederate Colonel O. M. Roberts — 4.4 mi
• Miami Railroad Depot — 4.5 mi
• Cottage Hotel — 4.6 mi