Rowland Roberts

  General Notes:

Llanycil Parish Records. Baptisms: Rowland s/o Robert Cadwaladr of Penybryn -- 29 March 1685
He immigrated from Wales about 1700. He was a minister amongst Friends and visited Wales as a preacher. He established a tavern in Montgomery twp. His will is dated 12 Jul 1749 and was probated Oct 1749. He leaves to daughter in law Hannah Jones two small plots of land with the stipulation that she does not set up a competing tavern. He also mentions daughter in law Mary Davis, and son in law James Williams. His son Eldad was appointed executor. His tavern was located on the east corner of Bethlehem Pike and Upper State Rd. (now a gas station, diagonally across from the Mall). A competing tavern, owned by the Bartholomew family stood across Upper State Rd. where Kinkos now is. The first school in Montgomery twp. was on land donated by Rowland Roberts in 1727. He also owned the land across Bethlehem Pike where the Methodist Church used to be.

Will abstract: ROBERTS, ROWLAND. Mountgomery, Co. of Philadelphia. Yeoman. 7 mo. 12, 1749/50. October 10, 1749. J.176. Daughters-in-Law: Hannah Jones (2 small lots of land, one being on the Great Road opposite the tavern erected on my premises; the other between another road and Joseph Ambler's house) and Mary Davis (I devise the same to my dau in law Mary Davis). Son-in-Law: James Williams (one dun filly). Son Eldad the plantation I now live, except the two lots; also two old working horses, a mare and remainder of time of a servant lad called James Bryan, he to pay my wife Anne Roberts 100 lbs. Wife Anne all personal estate, she to live where we now live; to have firewood. Exec: Eldad Roberts. Wit: George Lewis (his mark), Joseph Ambler, John Evans.

Gwynedd MM birth records: page 67-1 Rowland wife Mary (d. 12-4-1716), children: Eldad 12-19-1713, d. 1789; Sarah 1-13-1715.
Gwynedd MM minute: page 29-1 1719-9-24 Rowland granted certificate to Abington MM to marry Ann Bennett
Sources: Rowland Roberts is found in "Welsh Founders of Pennsylvania", vol II, p. 111, by Thomas A. Glenn and is mentioned in the pamphlet An Erudite Little Township, A History of Montgomery Township to 1900, by James A. Williams (found in the Historical Society of Montgomery County's library). Clarence Roberts (1940) and Howard Jenkins (1897) have sketches of him in the main references for this web page.

Rowland married Mary Pugh, daughter of Robert ap Hugh and Sarah verch Evans, on 1 May 1713 in Gwynedd, Pennsylvania. (Mary Pugh was born about 1696 in Bala, Merionethshire, Wales and died on 4 Dec 1716 in Gwynedd mm, Montgomery, Pennsylvania.)