The Many Faces of Robert Rogers - New Hampshire Born Frontier Hero, "Wobomagonda" (White Devil) to the Abenaki.
Few New Hampshire citizen’s played a more unique and controversial role in the pre-revolutionary period of what would come to be The United States of America than Robert Rogers.
Robert Rogers, or Rodgers (7 November 1731 – 18 May 1795), was a New Hampshire resident and colonial frontiersman. Born in Methuen, Mass, his family moved north to what is now New Hampshire settling in a town Roger's refers to in his writings as Mountalona and today encompassing the towns of Dunbarton and Bow.
His service to the people of New England, particularly in the war known in the colonies as the French & Indian War (in Europe the Seven Years War) is well documented and a study in the fame and controversy that surrounded this remarkable man. At only 14 years of age he became a member of the militia in King George’s War (1744–1748).
Many military historians attribute the seeds of the American Revolution’s success to the ideology, tactics and strategies of the famed Roger's Rangers, led forcefully and adeptly by Rogers. Indeed, one of his favored rangers was his second in command John Stark who would later set aside his "Ranger temperament" to become a General in the Colonial Army and utter the famed phrase "Live Free or Die" in the heat of battle.
