Oran Milo Roberts

Who was Oran Milo Roberts?

Oran Milo Roberts, was the 17th Governor of Texas from January 21, 1879 to January 16, 1883. He was a member of the Democratic Party. Roberts County, Texas, is named after him.

Oran M. Roberts was born in Laurens District, South Carolina. He studied at the University of Alabama and graduated in 1836, and was admitted to the bar the following year. After serving a term in the Alabama legislature, he moved to Texas, where he opened a successful law practice. In 1844 he was appointed a district attorney by President Sam Houston. In 1846, after Texas had become a state, he was appointed district judge by Governor James Pinckney Henderson. He also served as president of the board and was a well-respected lecturer in law for the University of San Augustine. In 1856 Roberts ran for and won a position on the Texas Supreme Court. During this time Roberts became a spokesman for states' rights, and when the secessionist crisis appeared in 1860, he was at the center of the pro-Confederate faction. In January 1861 he was unanimously elected president of the Secession Convention in Austin, a meeting that he had been influential in calling. Along with colleagues Roberts led the passage of the ordinance removing Texas from the Union in 1861. In 1862 he resigned his seat on the bench and entered the Confederate army, and was elected colonel of the Eleventh Texas infantry, with which he served the Trans Mississippi Department, “Walker’s Division,” during the greater part of the campaigns in Arkansas and Louisiana. In 1864, and while he was with his command, Governor Roberts was elected Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He held this position until he was removed along with other state incumbents in 1865.