Frances Wycliffe Roberts

Frances Wycliffe Edwards Roberts, First Lady of Texas from 1879 to 1883 and first wife of Governor Oran Roberts, was born in Greenville County, South Carolina, on March 4, 1819. She was the fourth child of Maj. Peter Edwards and Mary (Salmon) Edwards. Her mother was the aunt of John Salmon "Rip" Ford. Her family moved to Ashville, Alabama, when she was of school-age, and there she met Oran Roberts, who was studying law. The couple married on December 12, 1837, the same year Oran was admitted to the bar. Shortly thereafter, with extended members of both the Roberts and Edwards family, the couple moved to the Republic of Texas, first to San Augustine, then later to Tyler in Smith County. The couple had seven children: Sarah, Oba, Robert, Margaret, Peter, Francis, and Oran Jr.

During the Civil War, with her husband away in military or judicial service, Roberts outfitted a makeshift hospital in a tiny building adjacent to the family plantation. There, with the assistance of the family’s eight enslaved laborers, she cared for sick and wounded soldiers and wove cloth to outfit them. The war left the Roberts family in debt, and they sold their home and land to pay creditors. The couple briefly moved to Upshur County in the late 1860s, then returned to Smith County and lived on a farm near Tyler while Oran served on the Texas Supreme Court. Roberts was fifty-nine years old when her husband was elected governor. In early 1879 the couple moved to Austin and lived in the Governor’s Mansion. A few weeks after her husband’s inauguration, she and the governor hosted a wedding reception in the mansion for Lieutenant Governor Joseph Draper Sayers and his bride, Orline (Walton) Sayers. During her tenure as first lady, she oversaw the mansion’s installation of running water and the conversion of the back parlor into a bedroom for visitors. She also managed the household that included at least four servants as well as two of her and Oran’s adult children, a son-in-law, and four grandchildren.

When the Capitol building burned in 1881, Roberts helped salvage several damaged paintings by having them brought to the mansion for safekeeping. As first lady, she held large receptions for members of the legislature and opened the mansion to receive visitors. In 1880 one of the many events she hosted at the mansion was with Julia Pease, daughter of Lucadia and Elisha M. Pease; they hosted a “Leap Year” ball for the Austin “I” Club. Newspapers frequently praised her for her taste and charm. For her final social event in the mansion, the customary New Year’s open house reception and dinner, she had “some of Austin’s many beautiful and refined young ladies as her assistants,” including Adina De Zavala, Hulda Rainey (wife of Frank Rainey), Bessie Hoxey (daughter of Thomas R. Hoxey), and Stella and Etta Wooten (daughters of Thomas Dudley Wooten). After her husband’s term as governor ended, the couple moved to a farm in Spicewood Springs , and her husband became a law professor at the University of Texas.

Frances Edwards Roberts died in Austin on November 27, 1883, with her husband and the prominent clubwoman Rebecca Fisher by her side. During her funeral, government offices closed, and law students of the newly-established University of Texas served as an honorary escort alongside the hearse as it was en route to Oakwood Cemetery, where she was buried. As of 2022 her portrait, painted by William Henry Huddle in 1881, was part of the William Henry Huddle Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas of Austin.