ROBERT W. SANDERS was born April 10, 1815, near Harper's Ferry, Virginia. His father died when he was a child, and his widowed mother, with her eight children, moved to Rutherford county, Tennessee, in 1827. Robert W. was married there, in 1834, to Kesiah Johnson. They had two children in Tennessee, and moved to Sangamon county, Illinois, arriving in the fall of 1838, in what is now Cotton Hill township, where two children were born. Mr. Sanders assisted in quarrying the stone for the State House, then in process of construction at Springfield. His family suffered greatly from sickness, and in 1840 he returned to Tennessee, where he died May 31, 1857, leaving a widow, nine sons, and one daughter. Robert W. Sanders was a minister in the Baptist Church for thirteen years previous to his death. The widow felt that some great calamity was about to befall that part of the country where she lived, and without any definite idea of what it was, she meditated long upon the subject, and when her children were wrapped in slumber, she resolved, if possible, to take them again to Illinois, as a place of safety. She wrote at once to her eldest son, who had returned to Illinois soon after the death of his father. He was glad to give them such aid and encouragement as he could, and they arrived in Sangamon county, October 10, 1859, just in time to understand the situation of the country and add five soldiers to the Union army.