Page:The Round Hand of George B. Roberts.djvu/9

 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.

Leaving the Cowlitz Farm in October 1851, Roberts moved to his donation claim on the Newaukum, about seven miles away, where he lived until May, 1859. Here he farmed, as he says, without notable success—perhaps because no local market was available and transportation of his crops to distant markets was expensive, a problem common to most Oregon and Washington farmers. In 1853 with Seth Catlin, John R. Jackson, Fred A. Clarke, Henry N. Peers and Richard White, Roberts unsuccessfully asked the Oregon legislature to incorporate the Cowlitz Steamboat Company. When the initial session of the Washington Territorial legislature met in 1854, however, it granted Catlin, Jackson, Clarke, Peers and Roberts the first charter for a steamboat company on the Cowlitz River. Unfortunately the incorporators were never able to put a steamboat on the river, probably for the same reasons as their immediate successors.