428 WILLIAM BARTON ROGERS. 



WILLIAM BARTON ROGERS. 



William Barton Rogers was born at Philadelphia, on the 7th 

 of December, 1804. His father, Patrick Kerr Rogers, was a native 

 of Newton Stewart, in the north of Ireland ; but while a student at 

 Trinity College, Dublin, becoming an object of suspicion on account 

 of his sympathy with the unfortunate Robert Emmet, he emigrated to 

 this country, and finished his education in the University of Pennsyl- 

 vania, at Philadelphia, where he received the degree of Doctor of 

 Medicine. 



Here he married Hannah Blythe, a Scotch lady, — who was at the 

 time living with her aunt, Mrs. Ramsay, — and settled himself in his 

 profession in a house on Ninth Street, ojjposite to the University ; and 

 in this house William B. Rogers was born. He was the second of four 

 sons, — James, William, Henry, and Robert, — all of whom became 

 distiniruished as men of science. 



Patrick Kerr Rogers, finding that his prospects of medical practice 

 in Philadelphia had been lessened in consequence of a protracted ab- 

 sence in Ireland, made necessary by the death of his father, removed to 

 Baltimore ; but soon afterwards accepted the Professorship of Chem- 

 istry and Physics in William and Mary College, Virginia, made vacant 

 by the resignation of the late Robert Hare ; and it is a fact worthy of 

 notice, that, while he succeeded Dr. Hare at William and Mary Col- 

 lege, his oldest son, James, succeeded Dr. Hare at the University 

 of Pennsylvania. At William and Mary College the four brothers 

 Rogers were educated ; and on the death of the father, at Ellicott 

 Mills, in 1828, William B. Rogers succeeded to the professorship thus 

 made vacant. 



He had already earned a reputation as a teacher by a course of lec- 

 tures before the Maryland Institute in Baltimore during the previous 

 year, and after his appointment at once entered on his career as a 

 scientific investigator. At this period he published a paper on Dew, 

 and, in connection with his brother Henry, another paper on the Vol- 

 taic Battery, — both subjects directly connected with his professorship. 

 But his attention was early directed to questions of chemical geology ; 

 and he wrote, while at William and Mary College, a series of articles 

 for the Farmer's Register on the Green Lands and Marls of Eastern 

 Virginia, and their value as fertilizers. Next we find the young Pro- 

 fessor going before the legislature of Virginia, and, while modestly 

 presenting his own discoveries, making them the occasion for urging 

 upon that body the importance of a systematic geological survey for 



