Oakland Messenger Oakland IL Newspaper Thursday March 19, 1931 DEATH CALLS SPLENDID LADY Mrs. Sherman W. Roberts Answer Call Thursday Evening Mrs. Sherman Roberts passed away at her home in the Fairview neighborhood Thursday evening March 12, at 8:00 o'clock following a long illness. The writer can add nothing to the obituary written by S. P. Curtis which fully depicts the splendid life this good old mother has lived among us. John Dollar was born in Perthshire, Scotland July 1, 1807. He followed farming and at the age of 33 years he left his native land on a sailing vessel and was six weeks on the water landing in New York in June 1840, thence by canal and lakes to Chicago and then paid forty dollars for team to bring him to East Oakland township. He was married to Mrs. Sarah Hunt Curtis April 8, 1847 and located on the old Dollar farm in 1849. Of this family two are living, Mr. Ralph Dollar and Mrs. W. J. Griffith of Shelbyville, Ill and a half-brother, Mr. Charles Curtis of Oakland. Sarah, the subject of this sketch was born Nov. 1, 1852 on the Dollar farm and attended the district school and three years in the Oakland grade schools when T. S. Whitmore was principal and later attended the high school at Charleston for two years. In her girlhood she was a devoted daughter, was modest but happy in spirit and lovable as a friend and school mate. She was married to Sherman W. Roberts at her father's home on March 26th, 1874 and after five years they located on the farm where she lived until her passing from the scenes of this life at 8:00 P. M., March 12, 1931, closing a life of seventy-eight years, four months and eleven days. There survives the husband and the following daughters: Mrs. Sarah Hawkins, Mrs. Lillie Hawkins, Mrs. Maud Covalt, Mrs. Grace Redden, Mrs. Josie M. Naphew and one infant daughter preceded their mother to the life beyond. Also seventeen grand-children and ten great-grandchildren. Mr. and Mrs. Roberts were converted January 30, 1886 in the church at Harmony in a meeting conducted by the Rev. E. B. Randel and united with the Methodist Episcopal church. When this church wasbuilt in 1889 under the ministry of the late H. C. Turner they transfered to this church. She and her family were active in the church until the marriage of her daughters and in late years her broken health prevented her attending services. In her passing the husband has lost a loving, loyal wife and companion; her children, a true and devoted mother; the church, a staunch and unwavering member and for we few of her life-long friends that are left, another golden link in memory's chain has been added that binds us in love and interest and hope to that home eternal, peaceful and painless whither we know she has gone. To the younger people present it seems perhaps this is all that should be said but I am moved by my feelings and thoughts stirred by the memories of the past by my close associations with the people of this church and community and by the consent of the pastor and the family to ask your indulgence. When I visited the Roberts home Friday afternoon and witnessed the scenes so recently enacted in my own home when I took the hand of my friend and the grief stricken daughters and when they gave me the early history of Coles County, from which to obtain the dates connected with the life of the pioneer Scotish emigrant, Mr. John Dollar, and I read of other names of the men and women who have gone on, and later in the day I came into this church building with the undertaker and pastor, a moving picture of panoramic scenes and faces passed before me. I remembered out there in this cemetery was the sacred dust of my earliest ancestors that came to this country. My grandfather, Carlos Curtis and my uncle, Nicholas Curtis, neither of whom I have ever seen. Faces appeared in these pews that have long since been hidden by that veil that "so thinly intervenes between that fair city and me." Young people, great problems are facing you for solution of homes, church and state. Mr. Curtis then read a few verses of the Scottish bard, Robert Burns, they breathe the real Scotch spirit and estimate of human life and character of his time and the time when John Dollar stood on the deck of that sailing vessel and with his family watched the receding shores of his loved land fade away. He was of the vast host of early emigrants that came to these wild shores and made their homes in these fertile fields and built this wonderful civilization that we of today enjoy. We welcomed the emigrants then. But today how changed the scene. The bars are up, the cry goes out to halt the horde at Ellis Island and carefully count the quota to come in lest the Banions and the Capones and similar types flood our country and destroy our laws and institutions. Think gravely, young people and wisely, try to determine how much of this is due to the countries from which these people come and how much to the corrupt officials and politicians who exploit these people for their own selfish aim and purposes. Gaurd well, we beseech you, these principals, these wonderful institutions that these passing fathers have built and dedicated to human progress and to your care. Funeral services were conducted from the Fairview church Sunday afternoon at 2:00 o'clock, Rev. W. G. Montgomery officiating. The church would not near accomodate the large number if friends who gathered to pay their respects to Mrs. Roberts. Interment was made in Fairview cemetery.