She married politician Joseph Jenkins Roberts, also an American immigrant, who was appointed as governor of the colony.

As a widow, Roberts traveled to the United Kingdom in the late nineteenth century to raise funds to build a hospital in Monrovia; she met with Queen Victoria for a second time.

From 1906 to her death, she lived in London with a political black couple, former mayor John Archer and his wife.

He sold his notable holdings in the United States in order to emigrate via the American Colonization Society to Liberia, a newly established colony in West Africa.

President Roberts made diplomatic visits to several countries and met with several heads of state, in an effort to gain recognition for the Republic of Liberia.

His wife Jane sometimes accompanied him, including to Barbados, the United States, England, Belgium, and France.

[1] When they made a state visit to England, Queen Victoria received the couple on her royal yacht and honored them with a seventeen-gun salute.

[5][10] While raising money, she visited the United States, where she dined with President Grover Cleveland and his wife at the White House.

[1] In July 1892, Jane Roberts represented her government in meeting a second time with Queen Victoria, at Windsor Castle.

[1] She was to present a quilt for the queen, made by Americo-Liberian Martha Ricks over a period of twenty-five years.

Roberts and the Liberian ambassador arranged for Ricks to accompany her and present the quilt personally to Victoria.

[9][11][12] Decades later, African-American artist Elton Fax drew a quick illustration of this Roberts/Ricks-Queen Victoria meeting and a larger portrait of Roberts, based on the 1905 photograph on this page, and entitled "They'll Never Die".

Hallie Quinn Brown noted in a 1910 visit that Roberts at ninety-one years old was still "clear in mind and wonderfully active.