The following story was taken from several sources to include the Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire by Noyes, Libby, Davis (Genealogical Pub Co., Baltimore, 1996); Provincial Papers, Documents and Records Relating to the Province of New Hampshipre from the Earliest Period of Settlement 1623-1686, Volume I, Complied and Edited by Nathaniel Boutin, DD; the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Vol 61 (1907); and "Robert's Farm for 300 Years Passed from Father to Son," by W.H.W. Benedict, Boston Sunday Globe, 1928. 

Thomas Roberts was born about 1600 in Woolaston (Wollaston) Worcester, England and died 27 Sep 1673 at Dover Hill, Strattford, New Hampshire.  Although many files show Thomas' parents as Sir Thomas Roberts and Frances James, an abstract of the official records of the Fishmongers' Company of London, researched and published by the Rev. Dr. Everett S. Stackpole, a noted genealogist, found that the father of Gov Thomas Roberts was John Roberts and not Sir Thomas Roberts.  Thomas is the son of John Roberts of Woolaston.  He married Rebecca Hilton in 1627 at Dover, Strattford, New Hamsphire.  She may have been the sister of Edward Hilton a fellow settler at Dover.  Thomas was buried in the oldest cemetery in Dover, which is adjacent to the Robert's homestead on the high bank of the Fork River at what is known as Dover Neck.

Thomas was said to have come to America with the Hiltons, which is very probable as he was a fellow member of the aristocratic Fishmongers' Guild of London with Edward Hilton and William Hilton.  According to guild achieves, the HIlton brothers were members of the guild, when Thomas Roberts apprenticed on 29 Apr 1622.  The friendship that formed between these three young men led them to associate with David Thompson, of Thompson's Island in Boston Harbor, when Thompson initiated his business enterprise to exploit the area above the Massachusetts colony.   

Unlike the Plymouth colony which was founded by the Piligrims primarily as a refuge from religious persecution and which had a percarious existence with pestilence, stravation, and hostile Indians; the Dover colony was established by English merchants as a business enterprise to make money in an area with rich resources of timber, fish and with friendly Indians with whom they traded.  David Thompson envisioned establishing fisheries, engaging in trade wih England and the other colonies, developing plantations, and possibly building ships.  He secured a land patent for 6000 acres around Dover Neck and became the prime mover in establishing the business enterprise that resulted in the establishment of the Dover colony.  An indenture was signed on 14 Dec 1622, by David Thompson and three wealthy merchants of Plymouth, England; Abram Collmer, Nicholas Sherwill and Leonard Pomery (later spelled Pomeroy).  Under terms of the indenture, the four signers undertook to start a settlement on Thompson's 6000 acre land grant.  Initially only seven men besides David Thompson were sent to begin the settlement.  

In the spring of 1623 the settlement of Dover Neck, New Hampshire began with the arrival of David Thompson and the first two of the seven men.  They came over on the ship "Jonathan" of Plymouth and landed at Little Harbor near the mouth of Piscataqua.  David Thompson lived there until 1628 when he retired to his island in Boston Harbor.  The Hilton brothers, Thomas Roberts and the other two associates came over afterwards on the "Providence" of Plymouth.  William was five years older than his brother, Edward, but when William went back to England Edward was appinted head of the settlement.  In 1627, Thomas Roberts married the Hilton's sister, Rebecca. 

The fourth article of Thompson indenture provided that before the end of five years after the first landing there should be an allotment of 600 acres of land around the buildings of the settlement, which with the buildings should be divided evenly between the parties; i.e., the first seven settlers.  As the head of the colony, Edward HIlton gave his brother-in-law the first choice on the selection of land.  It was from this allotment that Thomas Roberts obtained his farm, which incidently is the oldest farm in America to be continuously owned by descendant's of its original owner.  The Robert's farm of Dover Neck can lay claim to over three centuries of uninterrupted family ownership.  

The Robert's farm was laid out along the bank of the Piscataqua, or Fork River to distinguish it from the Bellamy or Back River.  In 1633, Captain Wiggin arrived with 30 or more colonists, under the provisions of Lords Say and Brooke, the colonists took possession land adjoining the Robert's farm, which Hilton and his associates had sold to the English promoters.  

After his marriage, Thomas Roberts lived in a house at the Point near the Hiltons.  It was not until the following decade after his farm had been partially cleared of timber that Roberts started building a home on his farm at Dover Neck.  Thomas Roberts had two sons, John and Thomas.  The four childern that followed them were all girls.  Thomas divided his farm equally between his sons, with John recieving the southern part and Thomas the northern portion.  On the division line about 200 yards from the Piscataqua stood an ancient white oak tree, which became known as the "Bound Tree."   The tree was old when Columbus sailed to America.      

In Apr 1640, he was elected 'President of the Court'  an office of the agency for the Bristol Company, the proprietors of Dover, from which he is sometimes called Governor.  He is known as the fourth Governor of the Dover colony, although the territory under his authority was only one town (Dover).  Roberts served until the Massachusetts Bay Colony achieved its ambition of annexing, in 1642, the Piscataqua settlements of Dover, Strawberry Banks, Exeter, also Hampton, and making them a part of Norfolk County.

Thomas Roberts had a leading part in the formation and establishment in 1640, of the "Dover Combination," an improved scheme of local self-government.  He was one of 21 of the 42 signers of the Combination agreement to protest in 1641 against the annexation of the Dover colony to Massachusetts. 

Governor Roberts was a regular member of the orthodox Church (Puritan) for many years, but was inclined to be liberal in his views, so when Quaker missionaries came to Dover he favored giving them a fair hearing instead of whipping them as ordered by the Massachusetts General Court.  Later in life, Governor Roberts embraced the Quaker teachings.  Three female Quaker missionaries had went to Dover early in the 1660's and secured a following from the Puritan Church, only to be driven out of Dover in mid-Winter under harrowing conditions in accordance with the Massachusetts laws against Quakers.  While Thomas Roberts sympathized with the missionaries and was in fact fined himself, by the being deprived of a cow, for attending the Quaker meetings and staying away from the Puritan public worship; his two sons, John and Thomas, both constables zealously executed their appointed part of the Massachusetts' order expelling the Quaker missionaries from its jurisdiction.  Thomas later rebuked his sons for cruelty in the way they had exercised their official duties, toward three Quaker missionaries; Anne Coleman, Mary Tomkins, and Alice Ambrose.  The three missionaries were led out of Dover on 22 Dec 1662 tied to the tail of an ox cart.  According to the warrant issued by Major Richard Walderne, the women were to be stripped to the waist and whipped on their naked backs with not more than 10 stripes apiece as they were led from town to town.  According to a contemporary Quaker writer, the Roberts' brothers had administered to the women 11 stripes, with one for good measure, instead of the 10 ordered by the court. 

After recuperating from their ordeal, the Quaker missionary women returned to Dover and continued their preaching.  They were not again driven from the town, but Constable Roberts and other members of the community undertook a project to take the missionaries down the river and out of Dover bound in an Indian dugout canoe.  According to the Quaker narrative, the women were taken from a house and dragged through the deep snow to the river, Alice Ambrose was plunged into the icy water and made to swim beside the dugout to escape drowning.  A sudden storm prevented this attempt to rid community of the missionary women from succeeding.  Quakers eventually became numerous in Dover and the Roberts family down through the generations have been divided between Quaker and orthodox (Puritan) faiths.    

From the earliest times, the Roberts family have been intimately associated with the progress of Dover.  It was Governor Roberts who was the first to turn the soil of New Hampshire with the plow.  He was taught by the Indians how to raise Indian corn and fertilize the hills with alewives, which swarned up river in the Spring.  A tannery on the Roberts' farm was the first established there.  Brick-making which came later was conducted by Roberts' descendants. 

The ancient burying ground, in which all the first settlers were buried, occupies a niche taken from the Roberts farm close by the highway.   The graves are mostly unmarked, but that of Governor Roberts is marked with a  headstone suitably inscribed, placed there to replace the original.  Governor Thomas Roberts died in 1674.