# Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 63/The Round Hand of George B. Roberts

The Round Hand of George B. Roberts
The Cowlitz Farm Journal, 1847-51
This double number of the Quarterly is a special issue of material by and related to George B. Roberts, resident of the Pacific Northwest from his shipboard arrival in 1831 as a fifteen-year-old Hudson's Bay Company apprentice. Except for time spent returning to England and bringing out his bride, Roberts lived in the Northwest from 1831 until his death in 1883. During these memorable years he participated in the British Company's success and control in the Pacific Northwest, witnessed the challenge of American trappers and traders by land and sea, the arrival of the first American missionaries and settlers in the Oregon Country, their eventual dominance and the Company's decline and departure.
Like Chief Factor John McLoughlin, Roberts was among those Hudson's Bay and Puget Sound Agricultural Company officers who became American citizens rather than leave the region which had become their home and where they had families and interests. But he was a younger man than McLoughlin when Oregon became part of the United States, not as high in Company ranks, and with less to lose. As aid, clerk, and a "general factotum" to McLoughlin and James Douglas, as well as at the Cowlitz Farm, he had experience in keeping records of Company business and in managing the assorted labor force—mainly Indians, Sandwich Islanders and French-Canadians, with a few Scotch and English. He grew into a likeable, civilized, orderly and responsible man—perhaps more of a democrat and American than he realized or could admit in the face of later events. As a Company clerk, however, Roberts' ultimate supporting authority was the formidable power of the Company exercised through the personalities of the chief officers in the Department of the Columbia. The success of work he directed depended on controls or an accepted rule of law which the Company provided for its employees. When that 'law' was destroyed, the American frontier law which replaced it had certain practical vacuums in regard to British relicts.
Roberts, like McLoughlin, had some bitter experiences ​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. 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.
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 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. ​Reaching the Pacific Northwest in summer 1831, officers and crew of the Ganymede caught the "remittent fever" current that year, Roberts last of all—which postponed his naval service. He remained for some time at Fort George, then taught school at Fort Vancouver. When he did engage in the coastal trade in 1834-35, either the sea or the post at Stikine disagreed with him, and he returned to the Columbia, where McLoughlin and Douglas liked his work. He spent a month or two at Cowlitz in 1839, at Oregon City in 1840, and at Champoeg in 1842.
After the end of his apprenticeship, George Roberts returned to England, to visit his old home and consider his future. There he courted and married his cousin Martha. Yet he felt "out of place" in England, and since the Company had given him the then unusual option of returning to its service with a better chance for advancement, Roberts decided to venture his fortunes in the Pacific Northwest. In one respect at least, he was like Oregon pioneers from the States, for his reports and letters to England in the 1840s urged relatives to come to the new country.
Back in the Oregon Country with his wife, Roberts served at Vancouver until December 1846, when Peter Skene Ogden sent him to take charge of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company's Cowlitz Farm, located on the ​north-west side of the Cowlitz River at the portage (just north of present Toledo). The PSA Company, organized in the late 1830s as the agricultural branch of the Hudson's Bay Company, set up its principal tillage site there in 1839–40. The original plan called for eight men, a number James Douglas felt was quite inadequate, but by spring 1839, twenty-four regular employees were scheduled. At harvest time in 1840, forty cradlers were employed to cut crops, and a large number of Indians helped in the fields. During the 1840s, about 1,500 acres were cultivated, and in 1844, for example, the Cowlitz Farm produced 7,000 bushels of wheat, 3,200 of oats, 1,000 of peas and some barley and potatoes. Though the PSA Company's larger flocks of sheep and herds of cattle were located at its Nisqually establishment, when Roberts replaced Charles Forrest at Cowlitz in late 1846, the farm inventory included 1,000 head of cattle, 200 horses, 2,000 sheep and 400 hogs.
Roberts was agent in charge of this large-scale agricultural establishment from the end of 1846 until October, 1851. His Cowlitz Farm journal, a semi-official record, described farm operations from August 23, 1847, through the end of May, ​1848 (including the time of the Whitman massacre and the main campaign of the Cayuse War), followed by occasional entries for September 1848, January and March, 1849, January and February, 1851. The comparatively advanced farming techniques and machinery used at the Cowlitz Farm were undoubtedly imported from England. Crops in the numbered fields were rotated, and the manure provided by the flocks and herds was used systematically. There was also an extensive system of drainage ditches. The farm journal contains observations on the relative advantages of fall and spring sown wheat and oats, of heavy and light sowing, etc. The sheep were dipped for scab, and Roberts tried to get them off the ground and into shelter during the winter.
During the 1840s, the Cowlitz Farm was the primary site of PSA Company production. Here crops were grown to meet Hudson's Bay Company requirements for its North-west posts and to fulfill its contract to supply foodstuffs to the Russian-American Company at Sitka. At the time Roberts took charge, production was probably at its peak; ​by 1849-50, the farm's importance had declined. The California gold rush disrupted Oregon's economy and carried off the labor force—a labor force previously decreased by the epidemics of 1847-48, as far as Indians employed at Cowlitz were concerned. The Company's foodstuffs contract with the Russian-American Company fortunately lapsed in 1850, for it could not have been fulfilled. In 1847-48 there were nineteen regular employees at the Cowlitz Farm, but in 1850-51, near the end of Roberts' superintendency, there were only six. Gradually the flocks of sheep and herds of cattle were shifted to Nisqually or Vancouver Island, or sold to settlers.
Other events affected Roberts' position and feeling about his job at the Cowlitz Farm. He must have been aware of its decreasing function and the growing problems posed as the number of settlers in the neighborhood increased. Then his ​wife died in July, 1850. He finally decided to resign his position, become an American citizen and take a donation claim, and set about making arrangements to leave the PSA Company. In 1851 Roberts began to take part in the public life of what was by then at least partly an American community in Lewis County, Oregon Territory, and acted as a justice of the peace. With some of his neighbors and acquaintances such as Simon Plomondon and Michael Simmons, he attended a precinct meeting at John R. Jackson's house early in July, 1851. The gathering concluded to call an August meeting at Cowlitz Landing in order to petition Congress to form a separate Washington Territory, and Roberts was appointed to the correspondence committee which notified other precincts north of the Columbia River. It seems doubtful that he attended the Cowlitz Convention in August; he did not sign the meeting's proceedings, which ​included remarks hostile to the PSA Company. His resignation from the PSA Company became effective some time in September, 1851 and Henry Peers took charge of the Cowlitz Farm. In October Roberts attended the Monticello Convention and signed the second memorial sent to Congress which requested the formation of a new territory north of the Columbia River.
​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. Finally ​community opinion, as he says, exerted enough pressure so that he was left in peace.
Unable to take the land as a pre-emption claim after the British and American governments had arranged a settlement for the Hudson's Bay and Puget Sound Agricultural companies' claims, in 1871 Roberts and his wife moved to Cathlamet, a lower Columbia River landing where they had friends and relatives. There Roberts made his home, carrying on a mercantile business and once more taking part in public life. He was elected county probate judge, treasurer and deputy auditor. Rose Birnie Roberts died in 1880 and George B. Roberts in 1883, leaving only his son George and his family to survive him. The April 3, 1883 Morning Oregonian reported Roberts' death, briefly noting the loss of one of the Northwest's "oldest and most respected pioneers … Mr. Roberts was a man of firm mind, well educated, and possessed a very retentive memory. He had met most of the early explorers to the coast and was thoroughly conversant with the early history of this country; a man of strict honesty and sterling integrity, his death is a great loss to the community in which he lived…"
George B. Roberts' Cowlitz Farm journal of 1847-51 and his 1878-83 letters to the historian Frances Fuller Victor present various aspects of his unique experience in the Pacific Northwest, separated in time of writing by thirty years. Those which take on a special tartness are some of the less emphasized fruits of "joint occupancy" of the Pacific Northwest by the resident and often disparately oriented pioneer representatives of Great Britain and the United ​States. Among the ironies of the meeting was the proof of the country's 'Eden-like' richness provided by the thriving farms and flocks of the British companies to the early American missionaries, official visitors and settlers, and the subsequent rejection or eradication of the PSA Company's advanced English farming techniques and large-scale operations by determined American exploitive settlers and individual frontier opportunists. The frontier settler's necessity of an immediate return, the need or hope that sometimes drove him to cross the Plains to improve his status, were foreign to a strong corporate British monopoly, even though it knew the profit motive. As Sir George Simpson wrote in 1852,
   The Hudson's Bay Company's trading posts were erected many years previous to the Oregon Treaty, at a time when they were the sole occupants of the country, the Sites being carefully selected as the most desirable for carrying on trade and maintaining their communications. The good judgment which was manifested in such selections is apparent from the fact that, now that the territory is becoming closely settled, those stations are considered the most desirable sites for towns, while the main highways of commerce are those which were established by the Company.
The less legal-minded American minority which moved onto the British claims was supported by the opinion of a large part of the American community, and by the actions of the U. S. Army in setting aside its own military reservations.
​The long-delayed final settlement of the claims between the American and British governments (and the boundary, in some respects hardly separable from the companies) allowed lengthy and bitter controversy. Court cases continued for years; repercussions of the "pig war" were felt from the Army's Department of Oregon to the Secretaries of War and State and the President; periodically various aspects rose and receded in newspaper columns like the Pacific tides; finally, many pioneer residents and most pioneer 'histories' of the region were marked with the bitterness or legends the disputes spawned. Duly weighing both legends and arguments, Frances Fuller Victor was the earliest and for many years the most generally disinterested historian of the Pacific Northwest; in gathering her material from sources such as George Roberts, she must have gained in knowledge and sophistication.
* ↑ 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 voyage no doubt were intended, along with the ship itself, to implement Company plans of the late 1820s for stepping up competition with the Americans in the coastal trade. See E. E. Rich, ed., John McLoughlin's Fort Vancouver Letters, First Series, 1823-38, Hudson's Bay Record Society IV (London, 1941), W. Kaye Lamb's introduction, lxix-lxxiv. (Hereafter HBRS IV.)
* ↑ Edward Huggins says Roberts "disliked the sea." See Huggins to Eva Emery Dye, February 1, 1904 (Dye Collection, OHS). For McLoughlin's recommendation and remarks about Roberts' naval service, see E. E. Rich, ed., McLoughlin's Fort Vancouver Letters, Second Series, 1839-44, HBRS VI (London, 1943), 81.
* ↑ The office of "clerk," its salary and chances for advancement are discussed in Burt Brown Barker, Letters of Dr. John McLoughlin … (Portland, 1948), 344.
* ↑ His sister-in-law's recollections on the subject (see pp. 236-40) have a slightly acid tone, though she admits the Washington prairie she and her family settled on was very beautiful.
* ↑ In Townships 11 and 12 North, Range 1 and 2 West. Boundaries of the 3,500-acre farm are described in v. 2, P.S.A. Co. Ev., 23, 35. The Hudson's Bay Company used Cowlitz Prairie as a horse pasture as early as 1833 (Clarence B. Bagley, ed., "Journal of Occurrences at Nisqually House," Washington Historical Quarterly, VI [July, 1915], 195n), though not as a farm. See A. C. Anderson, "The Origin of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company," Mss. 728 (typed), OHS.
* ↑ A principal farmer, one principal shepherd and two assistants, six ploughmen, a blacksmith and his assistant, two rough carpenters and ten Canadian laborers. See Leonard A. Wrinch, "The Formation of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company," WHQ, XXIV (January, 1933), 6; and Douglas to Governor and Committee, October 18, 1838, in HBRS IV:264. Douglas felt that because the farm was so far from "civilized countries," it would require men to provide and repair carts, harness, lumber, houses, take care of farm machinery, as well as regular and seasonal agricultural laborers—in other words, conditions required a broad, integrated approach rather than simple agricultural production.
* ↑ "A. C . Anderson's Memo relating to the Cowlitz Farm, &c, 1841," Mss. 728 (typed), OHS.
* ↑ WHQ, XVIII (January, 1927), 59.
* ↑ Roberts' testimony in v. 2, P.S.A. Co. Ev., 68; see also ibid., 16.
* ↑ The Nisqually Farm journal published in the Washington Historical Quarterly provides a useful comparison, and includes March 1849 to December 1852 under P.S.A. Company administration. Victor J. Farrar is editor of "The Nisqually Journal," March 10, 1849–December 31, 1852, in X (1919), 205–30; XI:59–65, 136–49, 218–29, 294–302; XII:68–70, 137–48, 219–20, 300–303; XIII:57–66, 131–41, 225–32, 293–99; XIV:145–48, 223–24, 299–306; XV:63–66, 126–43, 215–26, 289–98. While they supplement each other in time, the emphases in the Cowlitz and Nisqually journals vary and different events predominate. William F. Tolmie, who had charge of the Nisqually Farm for many years, testified that the P.S.A. Company's business at Cowlitz was the "production of wheat, oats, butter, pork, horned cattle, sheep, horses, and other farm produce. At Nisqually, the breeding of horned cattle, sheep and horses; the exportation of the same, and of wool, hides, tallow and salt beef." V. 2, P.S.A. Co. Ev., 105. See also footnote 18.
* ↑ The journal mentions various kinds of plows and harrows, probably from what A. C. Anderson described as the farm's "large depot … of costly implements" kept at Vancouver. "There was a costly threshing mill of English manufacture, and other implements." See his "Memo relating to the Cowlitz Farm, &c, 1841."
* ↑ Roberts estimated the value of the "ditching" at $8,000. V. 2, P.S.A. Co. Ev., 71.
* ↑ John S. Galbraith, The Hudson's Bay Company as an Imperial Factor, 1821-1869 (Berkeley, 1957), 162.
* ↑ Nineteen employees are listed for Outfit 1847-48, seventeen for 1848-49, eleven for 1849-50 and six for 1850-51, not including temporary help for planting, harvesting or other special jobs. See Extracts from District Statements, Hudson's Bay Company Archives, B.239/1/18, fos. 45-46, B.239/1/19, fo. 44, B.239/1/20, fo. 45, and B.239/1/21, fo. 43 (information obtained for use in this article through courtesy of the Hudson's Bay Company, London). In spite of the decrease of employees, Roberts' salary increased from seventy-five to £100. Ibid. John R. Jackson's statement about the effect of the California gold discoveries on Cowlitz Farm is in v. 2, P.S.A. Co. Ev., 18. See also the Nisqually journal entries for 1849.
* ↑ Some cattle and sheep were lost in the hard winter of 1849-50 (v. 2, P.S.A. Co. Ev., 18). When Roberts left the Cowlitz Farm in fall 1851, there were 250 cattle, 1,000 sheep and 100 hogs (ibid., 73). While the Cowlitz Farm appears to have been operated on a much smaller scale and to hold it as a P.S.A. Company claim by the few employees stationed there from 1852-56, business increased in some respects at the Nisqually Farm. The U.S. Army post established at Steilacoom contracted for supplies of meat (v. 2, P.S.A. Co. Ev., 93), and the number of vessels in the Sound increased. (See also John S. Galbraith, "The British and Americans at Fort Nisqually, 1846-59," in Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 41 [April, 1950], 110-12.) Hudson's Bay Company headquarters was on Vancouver Island, reached by the Sound from Nisqually, rather than at the old site, Vancouver, and most of the Company posts in Oregon and Washington previously supplied from the latter had decreased in importance, been abandoned or occupied by others.
* ↑ Entries in the Nisqually Journal note the departure of Dr. Tolmie to treat Mrs. Roberts and the arrival of Mrs. Roberts' youngest child, Emma, born that March. After Mrs. Roberts died in July, Mrs. Ross and Mrs. Tolmie took care of Emma until September. See WHQ, XI:295, 296, 297, 298 , and XII:137.
* ↑ The news of the passage of the long-expected donation land act reached Oregon late in 1850 (Oregon City Oregon Spectator, 4[5] December, 1850, p. 2, col. 6). Roberts probably picked the location for his claim before his wife died, but subsequently he could only claim 320 acres. His statement that he became a citizen about 1854 (v. 2, P.S.A. Co. Ev., 64) is misleading since the donation law required that every claimant be a citizen or declare his intention to become one before December 1, 1851. Roberts was called an American citizen by a hostile source in 1851 (see Salem Oregon Statesman, June 6, 1851, p. 3, col. 1), so he had probably made his declaration of intention. The claim is listed in Charlotte Shackleford, "Donation Land Claims," Chapter XVI of Building a State: Washington, 1889-1939, edited by Charles Miles and O. B. Sperlin (Tacoma, 1940), 428: No. 374, Geo. B. Roberts & wife, 321 acres in Sections 29 and 30, Township 13 North, Range 1 West. (Hereafter Shackleford, Washington DLCs.)
* ↑ He performed two marriages. See Oregon Spectator, January 16, 1851, p. 3, col. 2; and November 4, 1851, p. 3, col. 3; and signed 1851 Lewis County election returns (Papers of the Oregon Provisional and Territorial Governments, No. 1854).
* ↑ Oregon Spectator, August 18, 1851, p. 1, col. 3, and Oregon Statesman, July 29, 1851, p. 2, col. 1.
* ↑ See introduction to his letters to Mrs. Victor, third paragraph. He was still a P.S.A. Company employee in August. Hostility toward Roberts, presumably in his position on the company farm at Cowlitz, was expressed at a Steilacoom meeting earlier that summer. Jos. S. Broshears (who attended the Cowlitz Convention) and W. P. Daugherty signed the proceedings of the 'meeting' which stated that "Tholmie" at Nisqually, agent of the P.S.A. Company, was holding that land for John McLoughlin and George Roberts, both American citizens. Oregon Statesman, June 6, 1851, 3:1, and Oregon Spectator, June 5, 1851, 2:4.
* ↑ Nisqually Journal, September 12, 1851: "Mr. Douglas & Mr. & Mrs. Peers set off for Cowlitz this Morning. Mr. Peers is to remain at Cowlitz in place of Mr. Roberts who has resigned." WHQ, XIII:293.
* ↑ Oregon Statesman, January 1, 1853, 2:2.
* ↑ The bill was indefinitely postponed, January 31, 1853. Papers of the Oregon Provisional and Territorial Governments, No. 4471.
* ↑ H. H. Bancroft, History of Washington, Idaho and Montana (San Francisco, 1890), 269n. The first steamboats on the river were those of the Monticello and Cowlitz Landing Steamboat Company and the Oregon Steam Navigation Company in 1864, Bancroft says. But the boats 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ Roberts' three children were all from his first marriage: Frances, a daughter born at Vancouver, May 10, 1848, died at Cowlitz, December 10, 1867; Emma, born at Cowlitz, March 15, 1850, married James T. Phillips on February 12, 1869, and died March 5, 1870; George, who survived his parents, was born late in 1844, married twice, had five living children in 1919, when he was living at Forest, Lewis County. The information on Frances and Emma is from the Pioneer Card File at OHS, and from Roberts' account book, 1878-83, which includes entries for his small estate. Edmond G. Meany's "Living Pioneers of Washington," in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 31, 1919, has information on George Roberts' son.
* ↑ T. C. Elliott, ed., "British Values in Oregon, 1847," Oregon Historical Quarterly, XXXII (March, 1932), 42.
* ↑ The "Proceedings of the Public Meeting" of Lewis County citizens held at New Market November 5,1848 (Oregon Spectator, January 11, 1849, p. 1, cols. 4, 5) included the following provisions in a protest directed against Tolmie and the P.S.A. Nisqually Farm: "4th. That as it has never been the policy of the federal government in enacting laws granting the right of pre-emption, and other conformable laws to induce the speedy settlement of wild tracts within the United States, to grant said benefits to any other than American citizens, or those who had declared their intention to become such, in a legal form; that such will be the provisions of the anticipated grants of land to settlers in this territory we have not the slightest doubt?in fact, a departure from the long established policy of the government would eventuate in no good. 5th. That we view the claims and improvements made by the Puget's Sound Agricultural Society since the ratification of the
* ↑ For a discussion of the snags, fits and starts in international negotiations, see Ralph A. Martig, "Hudson's Bay Company Claims, 1846-69," OHQ, XXXVI (March, 1935), 60-70.