Job Roberts

ROBERTS, Job, agriculturist, b. near Gwynedd, Philadelphia (now Montgomery) co., Pa., 23 March, 1757; d. there, 20 Aug., 1851. From 1791 till 1820 he was justice of the peace. He encouraged mechanical and agricultural enterprise, improved the methods of farming, planted hedges, introduced green fodder in the feeding of cattle, and the use of gypsum as a fertilizer; was among the first to introduce and breed merino sheep in Pennsylvania, and promoted the manufacture of silk. In 1780 he drove to the Friends' meeting in Gwynedd in a carriage that was made by himself, which was said to have been, at that time and for twenty-five years afterward, the only one in that county. He published "The Pennsylvania Farmer, being a Selection from the most approved Treatises on Husbandry" (Philadelphia, 1804).

Source: Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography, vol. 5. James Grant Wilson and John Fiske, eds., New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1888, p. 273.

Submitted by Nancy.