1S85.J 1UO [Ruschenberger. 



opulent; none occupied high social or political station from 

 which patronage might possibly flow to them. They had little 

 patrimony besides those qualities which the human organism has 

 when it comes into the world. And yet they might be justly 

 thankful for their ancestral gifts, gifts which have no equivalent 

 value in coin. Their organic inheritance included a healthy 

 though not robust body, a sound mind, quick perceptivity and 

 capability, a ready aptitude for toil, with many of the constit- 

 uent attributes of that sort of nobility which needs neither title 

 nor rent-roll to set it off. Titled ancestors had no part in the 

 genesis of their endowments. 



Robert Rogers, the fifth in lineal descent, was born about the 

 year 1753, and lived on the Edergole, or Knockbrack estate, 

 which he owned in fee, and held on lease acres of land adjoining. 

 This estate lies between Omagh and Fintano, in Tyrone county, 

 Ireland. Newtown Stewart, in the barony of Strabane, then a 

 good market for cloth and yarn,* ten miles off, is the nearest 

 town, and Londonderry, forty miles distant, the city nearest to 

 it. The number of his tenants or extent of acreage held by him 

 is not now known. His social grade in the community is not 

 indicated by his estate alone. When the Presbyterian church 

 which he attended was reconstructed, he rebuilt and furnished 

 anew the large central pew in it, which he had inherited. He 

 was disposed to favor what was then termed the new light doc- 

 trine, but tolerant enough to listen to the religious and political 

 opinions ascribed to the French philosophers. 



In the small villages and rural districts of Ireland at that 

 period — more than a hundred years ago — those whose wardrobe 

 was limited to a single suit and an extra shirt or two (and they 

 were largely in the majority there, as well as everywhere), de- 

 termined social position in the community by the interval be- 

 tween the family wash-days. In their estimation those whose 

 wardrobe was extensive enough to have their washing done once 

 a year constituted " the great families ;" and those who needed 

 to have a family wash-day every six months composed the second 

 class in society. The washing of the Rogers family was done 

 only twice a year, at the brook which flows through the estate. 



In the winter of 1774-75, when twenty-one years old, Robert 



* Statistical Survey of the County of Tyrone for 1801-2. By John McEvoy, Dub- 

 lin, 1802. 

 PKOC. AMER. PUILOS. SOC. XXIII. 121. N. PRINTED NOVEMBER 7, 1883. 



