Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/276

262 mentions as additional evidence of his social standing that he inherited the large central pew in the neighboring Presbyterian church, which he rebuilt and furnished anew when the church was reconstructed. Robert Rogers was twice married; his first wife bore him twelve children, and the second five. Patrick Kerr Rogers was his eldest child. "The rudiments of Patrick's education," says Dr. Ruschenberger, "were received in a schoolhouse built upon the estate. It is described as having clay walls, a thatched roof, clay seats covered with bits of carpet, and being warmed by a turf fire. The teacher was a lame rustic boy, whom Patrick's aunt, Margaret Rogers, a lady of notable intelligence, had trained for the office. It is conjectured that he acquired his classical learning from a private tutor at the house of a kinsman." The father of Sarah Kerr evidently did not believe in the law of primogeniture, for he had exacted, as a condition of his daughter's marriage to Robert Rogers, a settlement of all the latter's lands upon the children of this union, share and share alike. Accordingly, Patrick, although the eldest child, could expect only one twelfth of his father's landed estate, and must prepare himself for some other occupation than that of a landlord. "Entertaining opinions not rigidly orthodox, he was unwilling to enter the clerical profession, though he had the example of two uncles who were clergymen." All things considered, a commercial career seemed best, and he therefore entered a counting house in Dublin. When the Irish rebellion broke out, in the spring of 1798, he contributed to Dublin newspapers certain articles inimical to the Government, on account of which he was obliged to leave the country. At that period ships plied directly between Ireland and Philadelphia, and on one of these he embarked, landing at his destination in August, after a passage of eighty-four days.

In the following May Mr. Rogers obtained an appointment as a tutor in the University of Pennsylvania, and soon afterward began to study medicine under the famous Dr. Benjamin S. Barton. Mr. Rogers was married January 2, 1801, his wife being the youngest of the three orphan daughters of a Scotch father and an English mother. Their father, James Blythe, had been a stationer and newspaper publisher in Londonderry, whither he had gone from Glasgow. After the death of both parents the three sisters had come to America, where they were received by a cousin, Mrs. Thomas Moore. At the time of his marriage Mr. Rogers was described as "a tall, erect man, of grave deportment, having dark hair well sprinkled with gray, and soft, sleepy eyes. He played the violin and sang well, but never in company or in the presence of strangers, because such performance or display seemed to him inconsistent with the dignity of a gentleman."