Roberts Settlement

Dating from the 1830s, its first settlers were free people of color, most of whom migrated from Beech Settlement, located 40 miles (64 km) southeast in rural Rush County, Indiana.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the settlement's population began to decline, largely due to changing economic conditions that included rising costs of farming.

Roberts Chapel, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, serves as the site for the community's annual reunions of its friends and the descendants of former residents.

Boxley, Indiana, a white abolitionist community in Hamilton County's Adams Township, was located 12 miles (19 km) to the southwest.

[4][5] The pioneer farming community was founded by free blacks and mixed-race people of color, who migrated from Beech Settlement, located 40 miles (64 km) to the southeast in Ripley Township, Rush County, Indiana.

[9] Others Roberts settlers included those with surnames of Walden, Winburn, Rice, Gilliam, Brooks, White, Roads, Sweat, Newsome, Lockleary, Hurley, Matthews, and Knight.

The settlement began to decline in the early 1900s after it became difficult to acquire inexpensive, high quality land for small family farms.

By the mid-twentieth century well-paid factory employment was available in nearby towns and urban areas such as Noblesville, Kokomo and Indianapolis, Indiana.

[9][12][13] By 1838 ten black farmers had purchased 920 acres (370 hectares) of public lands in Jackson Township and were living at Roberts Settlement.

These early settlers migrated west due to more oppressive government acts against free blacks following Nat Turner's slave rebellion in 1831.

[19] By 1870 there were thirty-five black families (more than 200 individuals) living in rural Jackson and Adams townships, with three-fifths of the area's farmland under cultivation or serving as pasture lands.

Friends and the descendants of the families who once lived in the settlement have gathered at Roberts Chapel, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, for annual reunions since 1925.

[24][25] In 1851 the Peru and Indianapolis Railroad reached Noblesville, the Hamilton County seat of government, 12 miles (19 km) east of Roberts Settlement.