Personal life
Roberts was married three times. In 1830, Roberts was married to his first wife, Catherine Dodge Amerman (1813–1845). Before her death, they were the parents of:
Isaac K. Roberts (1835–1888), who worked with his father.
Mary Matilda Roberts (1836–1919), who died unmarried.
Marshall Owen Roberts Jr. (1843–1865), who died unmarried.
On November 17, 1847, he remarried to Caroline Danforth Smith (1827–1874), a daughter of Norman Smith Jr. and Caroline (née Danforth) Smith of Hartford, Connecticut. Her elder sister, Mary Boardman Smith, was the wife of abolitionist William Weston Patton (fifth president of Howard University). Caroline, a friend of President Abraham Lincoln, founded at least four benevolent societies in New York City. By 1857, they lived at 107 Fifth Avenue at the southeast corner of 18th Street. Before her death, they were the parents of:
Caroline Marshall Roberts (1849–1893), who married sculptor Ames Van Wart (1841–1927), a grandson of Henry van Wart (brother-in-law of Washington Irving) in 1869.
His third marriage was in 1875 to Susan Lawrence Endicott (1840–1926), a daughter of John Endicott of Salem, Massachusetts (descendants of John Endecott, the longest-serving governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony). After their marriage, Susan threw a lavish reception at their Fifth Avenue home on December 16, 1879, which included the Vanderbilts, Beeckmans, Agnews, Astors, Townsends, Van Rensselaers and Pierreponts. Before his death, they were the parents of:
Marshall Owen Roberts (1878–1931), who became a British subject and later married Irene Helen Murray (b. 1882), a daughter of Sir George Murray (grandson of George Murray Bishop of Rochester) and granddaughter of Lord Dunleath, in 1903. They divorced in 1921.
Roberts died from a stroke on September 11, 1880, at the United States Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York. After a funeral at Calvary Church, where his pallbearers included William M. Evarts, Hamilton Fish, Peter Cooper, Edwards Pierrepont, Henry G. Stebbins, Percy R. Pyne, Samuel Sloan and Edward N. Dickerson, he was buried in the Roberts family vault at Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx. The New York Times estimated his fortune at $10 million at the time of his death.
After his death, his widow remained involved in the New York social scene, before her remarriage to Ralph Vivian in 1892. They moved to London and she leased the Fifth Avenue mansion to Cornelius and Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt while they were building their chateau on upper Fifth Avenue. She died in London on March 22, 1926.
