Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 3.djvu/393

Rh with the workings under a different administration from the one to which he had been accustomed, he was made despatcher and two years later was promoted to the position of chief despatcher. This position he held until about the middle of 1907, when he removed to Portland, where he bought property and established his home. He was summoned away on the 25th of October, 1907, and his body was conveyed to his boyhood home at Lake View, Iowa, where it reposes in the family lot in the cemetery.

Mr. Roberts was happily united in marriage at Ogden, Utah, July 3, 1894, to Miss Mabel Van Tromp, also an expert telegraph operator in charge as agent at Cannon, Utah. She is a native of Watertown, Wisconsin, her parents being John and Martha (Luther) Van Tromp. Her mother was a native of England and her father of Holland. Both parents came to the United States when quite young. Mr. Van Tromp, who was a contractor, died December 2, 1879, in Lyons, Kansas, and his wife died in Marion Center, that state, November 20, 1872, the remains of both being interred at Lyons. Mrs. Roberts came west with a sister when a girl of fifteen years and learned telegraphy in college and at Portland, becoming highly proficient in the art. At the age of sixteen she was made agent on the Short Line at Battle Creek, Idaho, and from there went to Cannon, Utah. One son was born to Mr. and Mrs. Roberts, Harvey Eugene, a bright child, whose birth occurred at Albany, November 6, 1905.

Mr. Roberts was a member of Lodge No. 359, B. P. O. E., of Albany, and was secretary and treasurer of the lodge. He was also a member of the Odd Fellows at Lake View, and the funeral was held under the auspices of that fraternity. He was a republican but was broad in religious views and not identified with any religious organization, although his parents were Methodists. Mr. Roberts was a busy man and one who attended conscientiously to his duties. He was a kind husband and father, and his memory will long be cherished by friends and acquaintances who always found him kind-hearted and one who extended a ready hand to his fellowmen less fortunate than himself.

The first resident dentist of Portland, Dr. James Robert Cardwell, still practices his profession in this city, which has been his home since 1852. As one of the organizers of the State Horticultural Society, the Oregon Humane Society, and the North Pacific Dental College, he has left his impress indelibly engraven upon the pages of the state's history. The story of his life is written in terms of honor, and in memory and activities forms a connecting link between the primitive past and the progressive present.

He was born in Springfield, Illinois, September 11, 1830, a son of William Lee and Mary Ann (Biddle) Cardwell. The first census taken in Virginia makes record of one Cardwell as the only one of the name living in the United States. He came from France and in temperament and physique was typically Latin. He married into a French family—the lady a Miss Perrin—and they settled in Lunenburg county, Virginia, where he conducted a tobacco plantation. Their family included several daughters and five sons—Richard, John, Henry, Daniel and Perrin. Family history has it that one of the daughters became the wife of the father of Robert E. Lee, which accounts for the middle name of William Lee Cardwell, father of Dr. Cardwell, who was a cousin of Robert E. Lee and to whom he was always loyally attached.

Perrin Cardwell, the grandfather of Dr. Cardwell, was an overseer—in the terms of the south—on the estate of John Randolph. He died in 1852 on his estate of six hundred and forty acres near Knoxville, Tennessee, which he had purchased from the government about 1809 for twelve and a half cents per acre. At that date he emigrated from Virginia to Tennessee,