Born 1899 in New York City, Mary Kendall Greene was the great-granddaughter of Amos Kendall through his daughter, Mary Ann Kendall, and her second husband, Joseph D. Greene.

After attending Columbia University, she began working for attorney Arthur Sidney Roberts and eventually married him. Ms. Roberts got into genealogy as a hobby and spent many years tracing her family background. From relatives, she accumulated a collection of 19th and early 20th century letters written by her notable relatives. She had three sons and a daughter; the daughter, Silvia (later Silvia Lowrey) became a professional genealogist and assisted her mother with the work represented in this collection. Ms. Roberts passed away in 1992.

Amos Kendall (1789-1869) was an influential journalist and politician whose writings and support of Andrew Jackson helped raise the Democratic Party to the national stage. Kendall contributed to newspapers (some of which are included in this collection), served as Jackson’s postmaster general, and was one of Jackson’s “Kitchen Cabinet” of personal advisors. A wealthy man, Kendall also donated land to provide a home for the Columbia Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and persuaded Congress to support the new institution.

Mary Ann Kendall Greene (1820-1875) was Amos Kendall’s first child, borne by his first wife, Mary Woolfolk Kendall. Mary Ann originally married a man named Daniel Gold, but after Gold’s death, she remarried to Joseph D. Greene (1827-1898). The Greenes traveled abroad after the Civil War as Joseph took a foreign service post. Mary Ann was troubled by constant respiratory distress, which may have been untreated tuberculosis, and the Greenes later moved west in search of a healthier climate. They eventually settled in Faribault, Minnesota. Mary Ann died there in 1875. Their son Walter Woolfolk Greene was Mary Kendall Greene Roberts’ father.