In May 1855, George Roberts married Rose Birnie at Cathlamet, probably at the home of her brother James. Some years older than Roberts, she had come out from Aberdeen, Scotland, late in 1851, to live with her brother and his family, and must have met Roberts first traveling through from Nisqually to Cathlamet. Later that year and into 1856, during the Indian war, Roberts acted as a mail guard and clerk for William W. Miller, quartermaster of the volunteers. He was evidently still unsatisfied with his situation when he went to Victoria in 1858 to see Tolmie, and made arrangements to occupy the remainder of the PSA Company's Cowlitz Farm. In lieu of rent, he was to keep the farm buildings in repair and hold the claim for the company until it was reimbursed by the U.S. government. From May, 1859 when he moved back to Cowlitz, until 1865 or later, Roberts had to face the interference of others who refused to recognize the company's right to hold or lease the land.[1] Finally com-
- ↑ When the British and American Joint Commission was taking testimony in 1865 toward the settlement of the Hudson's Bay and P.S.A. Company claims, Roberts stated that the terms on which he leased the farm were that he keep the buildings and land "in the same condition that I received them. This has cost me, in consequence of the burning of the principal granary … about four hundred dollars a year, besides entailing on me a series of law-suits, of which yet I do not see the end." V. 2, P.S.A. Co. Ev., 78.
could only run during high water "until the government should have made large appropriations" for the river's improvement, "which was never done, and there remained the primitive canoe, or the almost equally primitive 'stage' to convey passengers from Cowlitz landing to Monticello, whence they were conveyed in small boats across the Columbia to Rainier, where they were picked up by a passing steamboat." Warre and Vavasour in 1846 reported that the Cowlitz was "very rapid and shallow, but like all the rivers in this country, subject to sudden rises of water, caused by the melting of the snow or rain in the mountains. During these floods the river is difficult of ascent, the boats being pulled up by the branches, the banks being too thickly wooded to admit of tracking with a line. It, however, is navigable at all seasons for flat-bottomed boats, in which the Hudson's Bay Company transport the produce of the Cowlitz Farm to Fort Vancouver." Edmond S. Meany, ed., "Secret Mission of Warre and Vavasour," WHQ, III (April, 1912), 150. Roberts' Cowlitz Farm journal includes comments on the seasonal difficulties of getting batteaux up the river to the landing.
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