Parson McGregor and his people had been in their new homes but four years when they had ready for occupancy a log school-house, sixteen feet long and twelve feet wide. It was in this, or in one like it, that Robert Rogers acquired his scanty stock of "book-learning," as then termed. But education consists in much besides book-learning, and he supplemented his narrow stock of this by a wider and more practical knowledge, which he obtained amid the rocks and stumps upon his father’s farm and in the hunter’s camp.
The woods, at this day, were full of game. The deer, the bear, the moose, the beaver, the fox, the muskrat, and various other wild animals existed in great numbers. To a young man of hardy constitution, possessed of enterprise, energy, and a fondness for forest sports, hunting afforded not only an attractive, but a profitable employment. Young Rogers had all these characteristics, and as a hunter, tramped through large sections of the wilderness between the French and English settlements. On such excursions he mingled much with the Indians, and somewhat with the French, obtaining by such intercourse some knowledge of their languages, of their modes of hunting, and their habits of life. He also acquired a fondness for the woods and streams, tracing the latter well up towards their sources, learning the portages between their headwaters, many of the Indian trails and the general topography of the great area just mentioned.
During the French and Indian wars small bodies of soldiers were often employed to "watch and ward" the frontiers, and protect their defenceless communities from the barbarous assaults of Indians, turned upon them from St. Francis and Crown Point. Robert Rogers had in him just the stuff required in such a soldier. We shall not, therefore, be surprised to find him on scouting duty in the Merrimack Valley, under Captain Ladd, as early as 1746, when he was but nineteen years of age;[3] and, three years later, engaged in the same service, under Captain Ebenezer Eastman, of Pennycook.[4] Six years afterwards, in 1753, the muster rolls show him to have been a member of Captain John Goff’s company, and doing like service.[5] Such was the training of a self-reliant mind and a hardy physique for the ranging service, in which they were soon to be employed.
I ought, perhaps, to mention, that in 1749, as Londonderry became filled to overflowing with repeated immigrations from the North of Ireland, James Rogers, the father of Robert, a proprietor, and one of the early settlers of the township, removed therefrom to the woods of Dunbarton, and settled anew in a section named Montelony, from an Irish place in which he had once lived.[6] This was before the settlement of the township, when its territory existed as an unseparated part only of the public domain. He may, quite likely, have been attracted hither by an extensive beaver meadow or pond, which would, with little improvement, afford grass for his cattle while he was engaged in clearing the rich uplands which surrounded it.
Six years only after his removal (1755), he was unintentionally shot by a neighbor whom he was going to visit; the latter mistaking him for a bear, as he indistinctly saw him passing through the woods. This incident was the foundation of the story said to have been told by his son, some years after, in a London tavern. The version given by Farmer and Moore is as follows, viz.:[7] "It is reported of Major Rogers, that while in London, after the French war, being in company with several persons, it was agreed, that the one who told the most improbable story, or the greatest falsehood, should have his fare paid by the others. When it came to his turn, he told the company that his father was shot in the woods of America by a person who supposed him to be a bear; and that his mother was followed several miles through the snow by hunters, who mistook her track for that of the same animal. It was acknowledged by the whole company that the Major had told the greatest lie, when in fact, he had related nothing but the truth."[8]
As the largest part of Roger’s fame rests upon his achievements in the ranging service of our Seven Years’ War, we must recall for a moment the condition of things in the British Colonies and in Canada at the beginning of this war.
The thirteen American Colonies had, at that time, all told, of both white and black, a population of about one million and a half of souls (1,425,000.)[9] The French people of Canada numbered less than one hundred thousand.[10]
The respective claims to the Central part of the North American Continent by England and France were conflicting and irreconcilable. The former, by right of discovery, claimed all the territory upon the Atlantic coast from New Foundland to Florida, and by virtue of numerous grants the right to all west of this to the Pacific Ocean. The latter, by right of occupation and exploration, claimed Canada, a portion of New England and New York, and the basins of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, together with all the territory upon the streams tributary to these, or a large part of the indefinite West.
To maintain her claims France had erected a cordon of forts extending diagonally across the continent from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. If one will follow, in thought, a line starting at Louisburg, and thence running up this great river to Quebec and Montreal, and thence up Lake Champlain to Crown Point and Ticonderoga, and on westward and south-westward to Frontenac, Niagara and Detroit, and thence down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans, he will trace the line across which the two nations looked in defiance at each other, and see instantaneously that the claims of France were inadmissable, and that another war was inevitable. It mattered little that of the forty-five years immediately preceding the treaty of Aix La Chapelle, fourteen, or one-third of the whole number, had been years of war between these two neighbors. They were now, after a peace of only half a dozen years, as ready for a fresh contest as if they were to meet for the first time upon the battle field. In fact, another conflict was unavoidable; a conflict of the Teuton with the Gaul; of medievalism with daylight; of conservatism with progress; of the old Church with the new; of feudalism with democracy—a conflict which should settle the destiny of North America, making it English and Protestant, or French and Roman Catholic; a contest, too, in which the victor was to gain more than he knew, and the vanquished was to loose more than he ever dreamed of.
Hostilities may be said to have been commenced by the French, when, on the 18th day of April, 1754, they dispossessed the Ohio company of the fort which they were erecting at the forks of the Ohio River, afterwards named Fort Du Quesne.