Robert Rogers, the Ranger.
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��bearing date December 20, 1762, ar- rests our attention. By it he transferred to his father-in-law, Rev. Arthur Brown, before mentioned, some five hundred acres of land in Rumford (now Concord, New Hampshire) together with "one negro man, named Castro Dickerson, aged about twenty-eight ; one negro woman, named Sylvia; one negro boy named Pomp, aged about twelve and one Indian boy, named Billy, aged about thirteen." For what reason this property was thus transferred I have no means of knowing. If the object of the conveyance was to secure it as a home to his wife and children against any liabilites he might incur in his irreg- ular life, the end sought was subse- quently attained, as the land descended even to his grand-children. *
And I may as well, perhaps, just here and now anticipate a little by say- ing that Major Rogers did not prove a good husband, and that seventeen years after their marriage his wife felt con- strained, February 12, 1778, to petition the General Assembly of New Hamp- shire for a divorce from him on the ground of desertion and infidelity. An act granting the same passed the As- sembly on the twenty-eighth day of February and the Council on the fourth of March following.t
I may, perhaps, here venture the ir-
- A portion of this estate was subsequently sold by his
descendants to the late Governor Isaac Hill, of Concord, New Hampshire.
t " An act to dissolve the marriage betiveen Robert Rogers and Elizabeth, his wife.
" Whereas, Elizabeth Rogers of Portsmouth, in the County of Rockingham, and State aforesaid, hath peti- tioned the General Assembly for said State, setting forth that she was married to the said Robert Rogers about seventeen years ago ; for the greater part of which time: he had absented himself from and totally neglected to support and maintain her — and had, in the most flagrant manner, in a variety of ways, violated the marriage con- tract — but especially by infidelity to her Bed; For which reasons praying that a divorce from said Rogers, a vinculo matrimonii, might be granted. The principal facts contained in said petition being made to appear, upon a full hearing thereof. Therefore,
" Be it enacted by the Council and House of Repre- sentatives for said State in General Assembly convened. That the Bonds of Matrimony between the said Robert and Elizabeth be and hereby are dissolved." — [New Hainpshixe State Papers, vol. 8, p. 776.
��relevant remark that "women some- times do strange things," and cite the subsequent conduct of Mrs. Rogers in evidence of the declaration. After her divorce she married Captain John Roach, master of an English vessel in the fur trade. The tradition is that, having sailed from Quebec for London, he most unaccountably lost his reckoning and found himself in Portsmouth (New Hampshire) har- bor. Here for reasons satisfactory to himself, he sold the cargo on his own account and quit sea life.* After his marriage he lived with his wife and her son by the former marriage on the estate in Concord, previously mentioned as having been conveyed by Rogers to her father. Captain Roach is said to have been most famous for his unholy exple- tives and his excessive potations.
The venerable Colonel William Kent, now living at Concord in his nineties, says that Captain Roach one day brought into the store where he was a clerk a friend who had offered to treat him and called for spirit. Having drawn from a barrel the usual quantity of two drinks the clerk set the measure containing it upon the counter, expect- ing the contents to be poured into two tumblers, as was then the custom. Without waiting for this division the thirsty Captain immediately seized the gill cup and drained it. Then, grace- fully returning it to the board, he cour- teously remarked to his astonished friend that when one gentleman asks another to take refreshment the guest should be helped first, and should there be found lacking a sufficiency for both, the host should call for more.
Whether Mrs. Rogers gained by hei exchange of husbands it would be hard to say. That in 1812 she went wil- ling from this to a land where "they
- Bouton's History of Concord, p. 351.
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