Robert Roberts

Robert Roberts was born about 1780 in Charleston, South Carolina. Whether he entered the world free or enslaved is not recorded, and the names of his parents have not come down to us — a silence common to the earliest generations of Black Americans, whose beginnings were seldom written down. From these obscured origins he would rise to a place of trust, craft, and lasting authorship.

By 1805 Roberts had made Boston his home, and he remained there until his death in 1860. He served in the great households of the era as butler and manservant, most notably to the industrialist Nathan Appleton — with whom he likely traveled abroad between 1810 and 1812 — and to Christopher Gore, the former Massachusetts governor and United States senator, at Gore Place. He also worked as a trader and stevedore and invested shrewdly in real estate in Boston's West End, becoming a man of standing and property.

In 1827 Roberts published The House Servant's Directory, a manual of household management drawn from his own mastery of the work. It is widely recognized as one of the first books commercially published by a Black American, and it ran to further editions — a rare and remarkable achievement for a Black author of his day.

Roberts was more than a steward and author. A pillar of Boston's free Black community, he labored against colonization schemes, joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and the Colored Conventions movement, and pressed for equal school rights and full citizenship. May Robert Roberts be honored — a man who turned service into art and quiet dignity into an enduring voice for freedom.