Rogers rangers biography

Jump to the biography. Source: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. While Robert Rogers was quite young his family moved to the Great Meadow district of New Hampshire, near present Concord, and he grew up on a frontier of settlement where there was constant contact with Indians and which was exposed to raids in time of war. He got his education in village schools; somewhere he learned to write English which was direct and effective, if ill spelled.

When still a boy he saw service, but no action, in the New Hampshire militia during the War of the Austrian Succession. He says in his Journals that from to his pursuits which he does not specify made him acquainted with both the British and the French colonies. It is interesting that he could speak French. In he became involved with a gang of counterfeiters; he was indicted but the case never came to trial.

Robert rogers descendants

In his military career proper began. He recruited men for the New England force being raised to serve under John Winslow , but when a New Hampshire regiment was authorized he took them into it, and was appointed captain and given command of a company. When his regiment was disbanded in the autumn he remained on duty, and through the bitter winter of —56 he continued to lead scouting operations.

In March William Shirley, acting commander-in-chief, instructed him to raise a company of rangers for scouting and intelligence duties in the Lake Champlain region. Robert Rogers won an increasing reputation for daring leadership, though it can be argued that his expeditions sometimes produced misleading information. In January he set out through the snow to reconnoitre the French forts on Lake Champlain with some 80 men.

There was fierce fighting in which both sides lost heavily, Rogers himself being wounded.