Maria Louisa Bustill was a member of the Bustill family, born in Philadelphia on November 8, 1853.  She was a schoolteacher, and attended Lincoln University where she met her husband Rev. William Drew Robeson.  William Robeson was born a slave but escaped on the Underground Railroad in 1860 at age 15, and served in the Union Army.  He graduated from Lincoln University with a degree in theology in 1876, and served 21 years as the minister of the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church in Princeton, New Jersey.  Maria Louisa Bustill and William Drew Robeson married in 1873, relocated to Princeton, NJ, and had several children, including the legendary and multi-talented entertainer and scholar Paul Robeson.

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