ROBERT ROGERS

ROGERS

Posted By: Jake Tornholm (email)
Date: 4/20/2020 at 13:47:34

ROBERT ROGERS, of sections 19 and 20, Grant township, is one of the prominent and leading citizens of the township, who settled in Adams county March 5, 1886. He came to Iowa in 1839, when it was yet a territory. He was born in Muskingum county, Ohio, February 27, 1834, a son of Henry and Fannie (Bixler) Rogers, both natives of Pennsylvania. The father’s parents were natives of New Jersey, and of English origin. In 1837 the family bade adieu to Ohio, and started toward the setting sun. They spent eighteen months in Sangamon county, Illinois, where they had relatives, and then came to Linn county, Iowa, having come all the way by teams. They settled nine miles southeast of Cedar Rapids, where they were among the first settlers, and
Bloomington, now Muscatine, was their nearest trading place, some fifty miles distant. At times the family were without flour for months. The father came here with only $2.50, but was a strong man and afterward became well-to-do. Mr. and Mrs. Rogers had nine children, five sons and four daughters.

Robert, our subject, was reared on a frontier farm, and spent many a day in driving ox teams to an old-fashioned breaking plow. He received a limited education in an old log schoolhonse, and at the same time helped his father improve a farm, and later owned a farm of his own. In 1886 he sold his place and came to this county, where he now owns 400 acres of land north of Lenox four miles. His farm is one of the best in Adams county, on which area good frame house, barns, sheds, cribs, feed lots, windmills and a grove of seven acres, planted to maple, poplar, cottonwood and willow trees. Mr. C. W Rogers, with his father, is engaged in the stock and
dairy business, keeping from fifty to sixty cows and 100 head of other cattle, besides horses and hogs.

He was married December 7, 1855, in Linn county, Iowa, to Miss Mary Jane Thomas, a woman of intelligence, who has been a worthy helpmate to her husband, and to whom much of his success in due. She was born in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, a daughter of James and Jane (Park) Thomas, both also natives of Pennsylvania, and of English and German extraction. Mrs. Rogers was reared in her native State until sixteen years of age, when her parents came to Linn county, Iowa, where the mother afterward died; the father died in Greene county, Iowa. Mr. and Mrs. Rogers have four children, viz.: Armintha Jane, the wife of Robert Clark, of Taylor county, Iowa; they have two children; Martha Malinda, the wife of David Clark, of Greene county, Iowa; Charles W., who lives on the home farm, married Elizabeth Scott, and has three children; Homer E., also on the home farm, married Myrtle McGraw, and has one child. Mr. Rogers is a Republican in his political views; his father was formerly a Whig. He has been a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church since March, 1858, as has also his wife. He has filled the positions of class leader, exhorter and Sunday-school superintendent; has also taken an active interest
in education and temperance and in every good cause.