Robert Rogers
BIRTH
Nov 7, 1731
Essex County, Massachusetts
DEATH
May 19, 1795
London, England
FAMILY
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Rogers, Robert
(1731-1795)
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Rogers was an American colonial frontiersman. Rogers served in the British Army during both the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War.
2
Places | Image | Address | GPS | Site |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Bloody Pond Marker | 1818 US-9, Lake George, NY 12845 | MARKER | ||
Mother Chick's Inn Marker | 124 Bay Road, Town of Huntington, New York, 11743, USA | MARKER |
DIED:
London, England
May 19, 1795
Robert Rogers was born to Ulster-Scots settlers, James and Mary McFatridge Rogers on 7 November 1731 in Methuen, a small town in northeastern Massachusetts. At that time, the town was a staging point for Scots-Irish settlers bound for the wilderness of New Hampshire.
He was offered a commission in the Revolutionary Army by the Continental Congress, but declined on the grounds that he was a British officer. He later wrote to George Washington asking for a command, but instead Washington had him arrested.
He escaped from Washington's custody only to find revolutionary ranks firm against him, so he offered his services to the British Army. They also were hoping that he would live up to his reputation. In August 1776, he formed another ranger-type unit called the Queen's Rangers as its colonel.
In September 1776, Rogers assisted in the capture of Nathan Hale, a spy for the Continental Army. A contemporaneous account of Hale's capture is in the Library of Congress, written by Consider Tiffany, a Connecticut shopkeeper and Loyalist. In Tiffany's account, Rogers did not believe Hale's cover story that he was a teacher, and lured him into his own betrayal by pretending to be a patriot spy himself.