50 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
uninteresting, as a humble contribution towards the better understand- 
ing of the circumstances which attended the early settlement of part of 
this Province. 
The founder of my own family in Upper Canada was my great- 
great-grandfather, Col. James Rogers. 
During the Revolutionary War he had served for five years as com- 
mandant of a corps known as the King’s Rangers, which, during that 
time, formed part of the garrison of St. Johns, Quebec. | 
This post commanded the northern outlet of the great waterway 
which connected the valley of the Hudson with that of the St. Lawrence. 
At the Peace, my ancestor settled with some two hundred of his 
disbanded soldiers, upon the shores of the Bay of Quinte, he and his 
followers occupying what is known as the township of Fredericksburg, - 
as well as part of an adjoining township. 
The earliest recorded connection of this officer with Canada, how- 
ever, dates from a quarter of a century earlier than the settlement. 
Of that part of the so-called Seven Years War which was waged 
upon this continent, he saw service from the commencement to the 
close.* 
As a captain in command of a detachment of his more famous 
brother, Robert Rogers’ regiment—serving, however, independently of 
the main body—he took part in the campaigns in Cape Breton and 
Canada, under Wolfe and Amherst. “He was present at the successive 
captures of Louisbourg, Quebec and Montreal, the steps by which’ 
Canada passed from French to English rule. 
Before Montreal, the army of the St. Lawrence in which he was 
acting, was joined by the forces from the south, in whose campaigns the 
main body of Rogers’ Rangers, eight hundred strong, under the com- 
mand of his brother Robert, had played a somewhat conspicuous part. 
Upon the capitulation of Montreal and the cession of the Canadas, 
this latter officer was despatched by the commander-in-chief upon the 
first British expedition, as such, up the Great Lakes. 
With two hundred of his rangers and a staff of executive officers, 
Robert Rogers made the voyage, in whaleboats, from Montreal to De- 
troit. The successive French posts upon the route were visited; the 
white standard of the Bourbons was replaced by the flag of England, 
and allegiance to His Britannic Majesty exacted. 
The story of this voyage has often been told, notably in the «Major's 
cwn military journals published in London in 1765, a work which, with 
its companion volume, an account of North America, betraying an in- 

1 Haldimand Mss.—J. R. to Haldimand—Oct. 20th, 1779. 
