with some of his adopted compatriots. The first Mrs. Roberts died of a "typhoid or camp fever" brought in, Roberts felt, by the annual immigration. Considering the conditions under which he and his family maintained their position as lessees of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company's Cowlitz Farm claim from 1859 to 1870, they obviously had considerable endurance. Roberts held the 160-acre remainder during those years apparently without resorting to the illegal methods of his local opponents.[1] Unlike his friend Edward Huggins, an ex-PSA Company employee who was able to claim part of the Nisqually Farm after the company was reimbursed for its holdings by the U. S. government, Roberts did not carry out his intention to hold the Cowlitz land as a pre-emption claim.[2]
Since Roberts' personality as well as his position ultimately must have played some part in the attitude of the American community toward him, it seems pertinent to include some personal detail, though not much is available directly. The general outline of his life sent to Mrs. Victor in 1878[3] is sketchy; probably she was more interested in events and people he had known. He states he was born in Aldborough on the east coast of England in 1816, and admitted to the famous Greenwich Hospital naval school when he was eleven. Though he never mentions his parents, it would seem his father or an uncle must have been a navy rating. After three years at the Greenwich school in London he was apprenticed to the Hudson's Bay Company's naval service and sailed for the Columbia on the Company ship Ganymede.[4]
- ↑ Probably he was aware that he could not, in the circumstances. See Simon Plomondon's testimony about Roberts' difficulties, in British and American Joint Commission for the Settlement of the Claims of the Hudson's Bay and Puget Sound Agricultural Companies, P.S.A. Co. vs U. S., v. 2, P.S.A. Co. Ev. (v. 3 of 14, Washington, D. C., 1865 [?]), 13, and John R. Jackson's remarks, ibid., 16-17. (Hereafter v. 2, P.S.A. Co. Ev.)
- ↑ Because he had taken a donation claim earlier? His intention is stated in v. 2, P.S.A. Co. Ev., 74.
- ↑ Letter of December 16, 1879, below.
- ↑ It was not always easy to secure sailors for the Company's marine service in the Pacific Northwest, and the young apprentices taken that
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