Archives West Finding Aid

Ephraim Peter Roberts was born at Danbury, Vermont, October 23, 1825. After completing studies at Williams College in 1854, he entered Bangor Theological Seminary in Maine, and was ordained by the Congregational Church at Bangor on July 28, 1857. On Septermber 8, 1857, he married Myra Holman Farrington of Holden, Maine, born there September 22, 1835. Both having been certified as missionaries by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, they sailed from Boston on October 30, 1857, en route to Micronesia via Cape Horn and Honolulu. Fellow passengers on the Eliza and Ella were the David Dwight Baldwins, also newlyweds, on their way to the American Board mission at Lahaina, Maui.

After a six month voyage to Honolulu, the Roberts stayed there three months until the missionary packet Morning Star was made ready for its second voyage to Micronesia. The ship sailed June 30, 1858, with Ephraim and Myra Roberts, Mrs. Luther Halsey Gulick and three of her children, and Mrs. Gulick's brother-in-law, Theodore W. Gulick. They arrived at Ponape, Caroline Islands, on August 18th.

The Roberts spent the next three years at Shalong, Ponape, replacing Dr. and Mrs. Luther H. Gulick who, with the A. A. Sturges', had established the Ponape mission in 1852. During these years the first two of the Roberts' nine children were born. By mid-summer of 1861 their fellow missionaries to Micronesia decided that the Roberts' should leave Ponape for a number reasons. Two-year-old Charlotte Roberts had somewhat fragile health, and fear for her life was heightened by the death of the Sturges' little girl at Ronkiti, Ponape. Also, whaling vessels were calling less frequently at the islands, life there was increasingly isolated, and mission work was not proceeding as had been hoped. When Mrs. Sturges's health seriously failed, making necessary her return to Honolulu, the Roberts were urged to go too.

They again sailed on the Morning Star, in July of 1861, wound up their American Board affairs in Honolulu, and embarked for San Francisco in September. From there they sailed to Portland, Oregon, and settled for a time at White Salmon, Washington Territory. In 1868 they took up a homestead near The Dalles, Oregon, engaged in sheep raising and fruit growing, and devoted much time to the Congregational Church in that area. Ephraim Roberts died February 6, 1893, and Myra Roberts died February 18, 1912.