After braving the perils of the Appalachian Mountain wilderness and the danger of being kidnapped and sold into slavery, Micajah Walden and cousins Elijah and Hansel Roberts, pioneers from Northampton County, North Carolina, landed in Hamilton County, Indiana, in 1835. There, they founded Roberts Settlement, a farming community of mixed-race settlers that thrived in the 1800s and made a lasting impact on Central Indiana.
“The decision they had to make to leave, that was a tough decision,” says LaVella Hyter, president of the Roberts Settlement organization, a nonprofit established by the descendants of the original pioneers. Today, the nonprofit is largely based out of the picturesque Roberts Chapel, the settlement’s last standing structure, located on a well manicured plot in the middle of farm fields on a country road. There, the successors host school and group tours and gather once a year for a Homecoming celebration.
But the settlers who staked their claim at the site almost 200 years ago could not have known how long their memory would live on.
Encouraged by kin who had migrated earlier and established the Beech Settlement in Rush County, the pioneers believed the Indiana frontier held greater promise for their families than the slave states they fled. As free people of color—a status given to the multiracial offspring of Blacks, whites, and Native Americans, as well as to free Blacks—their lives were becoming increasingly fraught as the nation grappled with the moral stumbling block of slavery. “They couldn’t own a gun. Even if they were landowners, they couldn’t vote anymore. They couldn’t testify against a white person. … So they began to think, you know, maybe this isn’t for us anymore,” explains Bryan Glover, vice president of the Roberts Settlement organization.
Life in their new home wasn’t easy. Indiana’s thick hardwood forests and wetlands took years to clear, and as the Civil War approached, rancor against Blacks was high and hostile legislation enacted by the state was routine. But over time, the settlers prospered. By 1854, their holdings encompassed 1,124 acres and counting. New families arrived. A log cabin meetinghouse that was the center of civic activity, including both church and school, was replaced by Roberts Chapel in 1858 and a schoolhouse in 1877.
The residents paid their comparatively good fortune forward, aiding escapees on the Underground Railroad, condemning slavery at interracial Wesleyan Methodist revivals held at Roberts Chapel, serving in the 28th Regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War, and bringing Frederick Douglass to Noblesville to speak at a political rally in 1880.
Eventually, modernization and the settlement’s ballooning population led younger adults to seek their fortunes elsewhere. “The Roberts Settlement was, you could say, a victim of its own success. They were educating their children long before most Black families,” explains Glover. “By 1880, 1900, if you had a 40-acre farm, that was nothing. It wasn’t viable economically. They had the advantage of being educated. They left the community, and they moved into the bigger towns and cities and became the teachers, the doctors, part of that class of people that received all these Blacks migrating from the South and other places. … It basically led to the decline of the settlement in the early 1900s.”
Yet, even as they scattered, the families recognized that what they had built at Roberts Settlement was something special, and they endeavored to preserve it. In 1923, they held their first Homecoming, inviting back all the former community members who had dispersed. In 1938, they established their nonprofit.
Over July 4 weekend 2023, the descendants celebrated their 100th Homecoming—a tradition that has endured even longer than the farming community’s heyday. The gathering was attended by around 300 people, some of whom grew up on or near the settlement and some of whom had only just discovered their shared heritage.
The organization’s current project is the Legacy Walk at Roberts Settlement, now nearing completion. The self-guided path at the chapel opens to the public next month and includes interpretative stations exploring the location’s story and memorials honoring its founders.
An interactive virtual element using a downloadable app is in development and will constitute the next phase of educational outreach.
Though the Roberts Settlement is unique in its lasting presence and influence, what descendants want people to know is that it was not the only settlement of its kind, and it’s not merely the story of a select group of families. It’s representative of an important piece of American history, a crossroads of racial, social, and political factors spanning identities, locales, and time. “Our history is for everybody,” says Hyter. “We want them to embrace it.”
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