Robert Rogers

Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Rogers (7 November 1731 – 18 May 1795) was a British Army officer and frontiersman. Born in Methuen, Massachusetts, he fought in King George's War, the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War. During the French and Indian War, Rogers raised and commanded Rogers' Rangers, a light infantry unit trained for carrying out asymmetric warfare.

Early life

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.

In 1739 when Rogers was eight years old, his family relocated to the Great Meadow district of New Hampshire near present-day Concord, where James founded a settlement on 2,190 acres (8.9 km2) of land which he called Munterloney, after a hilly place in County Londonderry, Ireland. Rogers referred to this childhood residence as "Mountalona". It was later renamed Dunbarton, New Hampshire.

In 1740, the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748) broke out in Europe and, in 1744, the war spread to North America, where it was known as King George's War (1744–1748). During Rogers's youth (1746), he saw service in the New Hampshire militia as a private in Captain Daniel Ladd's Scouting Company and, in 1747, also as a private in Ebenezer Eastman's Scouting Company, both times guarding the New Hampshire frontier.

In 1754, Rogers became involved with a gang of counterfeiters. He was indicted but the case was never brought to trial.