Rogers, David

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Robert Lochiel Fraser, “ROGERS, DAVID McGREGOR,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 6, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/rogers_david_mcgregor_6E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Farmer, office holder, politician, jp, merchant, and militia officer; b. 23 Nov. 1772 in Londonderry (Vt), son of James Rogers and Margaret McGregor; m. first 6 Jan. 1802 Sarah Playter in York (Toronto), and they had two sons and two daughters; m. secondly 1811 Elizabeth Playter (they had no children); d. 18 July 1824 at his residence in Haldimand Township, Upper Canada
    • David McGregor Rogers possessed, as he was fond of pointing out, a distinguished name. His uncle Robert Rogers was the famous ranger leader during the Seven Years’ War; his father and two other uncles also fought in that conflict. During the American revolution, his father was major commandant of the 2nd Battalion, King’s Rangers. In 1784 James Rogers settled, with his family and corps, in Township No.3 (Fredericksburgh) of western Quebec. In 1789 young Rogers received 200 acres of land in Sophiasburg Township, Prince Edward County.
    • He was interested in politics, notifying his brother in 1795 that he expected the nomination for the riding of Prince Edward in the next election: “I hardly know whether to accept or Refuse the Offer. One thing I am resolved not to be set up unless I am pretty sure of a Majority.” He was returned for the riding in the 1796 election. The following year, despite his status as an assemblyman, he failed to win for his father’s heirs the land grants to which, he argued, his uncle Robert had been entitled. The Executive Council declared, not unreasonably, that Robert Rogers had never settled in the province and therefore had no claim to lands.
    • His real mark was made in the arena of politics where his uncompromising concern with proper procedure, correct form, and the rights and prerogatives of the House of Assembly earned him notoriety, if not prominence. Some historians have singled out Rogers as representing a “liberal” or American strain within loyalism, while disagreeing on the significance of that strain. Drawing upon traditions and occasionally language which had strong roots in the transatlantic world of whiggery, Rogers represented a brand of loyalism that emphasized the king’s prerogatives and the subject’s rights brought together in constitutional equilibrium. Missing from Rogers’s political world was the aristocratic emphasis of a Richard Cartwright . And, perhaps, it is more to Rogers than to him that one ought to look for the exemplar of the loyalist tradition in Upper Canada.
  • Son of Proven United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=7092
  • Find A Grave : https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/47807551/david-mcgregor-rogers