Page:The Round Hand of George B. Roberts.djvu/8

 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