Series 4: Ida Roberts Smedley Balderston

Ida Wilkins Roberts (1896-1993) was the daughter of Allen H. Roberts and Ida Wilkins and a birthright member of Moorestown Monthly Meeting, New Jersey. She was educated at the Westtown School, graduating in 1914, and taught in Friends schools. In 1917, she spent a year at the State Normal School in Los Angeles with the help of a funding grant from the T. Wister Brown Fund. After graduation, she taught briefly in California where she was courted by Philadelphia architect Walter Smedley who had been traveling with Quaker minister Joseph Elkinton. He was more than thirty years her senior and already a well-established architect. They married under the care of Moorestown Monthly Meeting on 10 month 4, 1919. After briefly living in an apartment in Philadelphia, they moved to "Oaklawn," a house on the Smedley farm in Middletown Township. Soon after, they move into the remodeled historic Smedley family home. They had three children: Walter, Jr. (1920-2010), Henry Roberts (1922-1997), and Alice Roberts Smedley (1924-1995). Walter, Jr., married Mary Jane Felix (1921-2016) of Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. Alice married Mary Jane's brother, Samuel Palmer Felix, and moved to California. With the Depression and Walter's declining health in the 1930s, the family struggled financially, and Ida returned to teaching. Walter Smedley died in 1939, and in 1942, she married C. Canby Balderston, a business executive and widower with two grown sons, Frederick E. Balderston and Robert W. Balderston. C. Canby Balderston was a conscientious objector in World War I, taught at the University of Pennsylvania and served on the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System from 1954-1966. After his retirement, the couple travelled widely. He died in 1979, and Ida Roberts Smedley Balderston died December 31, 1993.