464: 



OBITUARIES, AMERICAN. (ROGERS ROWLAND.) 



his death in 1856, and continued as the active 

 head of the business till 1897. During and after 

 the civil war the business prospered greatly, and 

 Mr. Rogers amassed a fortune, though he eccen- 

 trically adhered to the most conservative meth- 

 ods. The greater part of his fortune, more than 

 $5,000,000, he left to the Metropolitan Museum of 

 Art in New York city. 



Rogers, John Rankin, Governor of Washing- 

 ton, born in Brunswick, Me., Sept. 4, 1838; died 

 in Olympia, Wash., Dec. 20, 1901. He^was edu- 

 cated in the common schools. From 1852 to 1856 

 he was in a drug-store in Boston, and in the 

 latter year he became manager of a similar store 

 in Jackson, Miss. In 1861 he removed to southern 

 Illinois, where he taught school till 1866, and 

 then engaged in farming. He returned to Maine 

 in 1870, and for five years conducted a drug-store 

 in his native town. In 1876 he became a farmer 

 in Kansas. He was one of the organizers of the 

 Farmers' Alliance in 1878, and after that time 

 took an active interest in politics. As a green- 

 back Republican he was elected to several minor 

 offices. In 1887 he established, at Wichita, the 

 Kansas Commoner, one of the most influential 

 Populist papers in the State. He removed to 

 Puyallup, Wash., in 1890, and went into the real- 

 estate business. In 1894 he was elected to the 

 Legislature. In 1896 he was elected Governor of 

 Washington for four years, and in 1900 he was 

 reelected. Mr. Rogers was author of " the bare- 

 foot schoolboy " law, and he was one of the few 

 of the Populist legislators that would not ride 

 on a rail\vay pass. Besides his contributions to 

 the Populist newspapers, he was the author of 

 3 books, widely circulated in the West: The Irre- 

 pressible Conflict, Looking Forward, and The 

 Inalienable Rights of Man. 



Roper, Jesse Minims, naval officer, born in 

 Glasgow, Mo., Oct. 29, 1851; died at Cavite, Lu- 

 zon, Philippine Islands, March 31, 1901. He was 

 graduated at Annapolis in 1872, and received his 

 commission as ensign, July 15, 1873; as master, 

 Nov. 25, 1877; as lieutenant (junior grade), March 

 3, 1883; as lieutenant, June 5, 1884; and as lieu- 

 tenant-commander, March 3, 1899. He served on 

 the Supply and the Fortune till July, 1879, when 

 he was ordered to the practise-ship Constellation. 

 After 1882 he was on the Lackawanna, and at 

 the Naval Academy, and the Naval War Col- 

 lege from 1886 to 1889. He was ordered to 

 the Petrel in October, 1889, and returned to the 

 Naval Academy in September, 1891. He was as- 

 signed to the New York in July, 1894, and to 

 torpedo instruction on the Gushing in September, 

 1894. A short service as a member of the Naval 

 Examining Board was followed by his assignment 

 to Mare Island, and thence to the training-ship 

 Independence. He was assigned to the Monad- 

 nock in February, 1896; for a short time served 

 as assistant inspector, 3d Lighthouse District, 

 Tompkinsville, N. Y.; and March 23, 1898, was 

 made executive officer of the Mayflower. He 

 served with distinction on this vessel through 

 the Spanish War. In October, 1899, he was made 

 executive officer of the Pixie, and Nov. 15, 1899, 

 was assigned to the command of the Petrel. In 

 a brave attempt to rescue members of the crew 

 of his ship, which was on fire, he lost his life. 

 After one attempt, he had returned to the deck, 

 but returned against the advice and wishes of his 

 officers. Commander Roper was a skilled mathe- 

 matician, and of his shore duty twelve years were 

 spent in teaching at Annapolis. 



Ross, Leonard Fulton, soldier, born in Fulton 

 County, Illinois, July 18, 1823; died in Galesburg, 

 111., Jan. 18, 1901. His father was the founder 



of Lewistown, 111. Gen. Ross was a veteran of 

 the Mexican and civil wars, having served with 

 distinction in both. He was a collector of inter- 

 nal revenue under President Johnson. 



Rothwell, Richard Pennefather, mining en- 

 gineer, born in Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada, May 

 1, 1836; died in New York city, April 16, 1901. 

 He was graduated at the Rensselaer Polytechnic 

 Institute, Troy, N. Y., in 1858; at the Imperial 

 School of Mines, Paris, France, in 1862; and 

 later studied at Freiburg, Saxony. He engaged 

 in the manufacture of telegraph-cable and wire 

 rope in London, England, in 1864-'65; then prac- 

 tised as a civil and mining engineer in Penn- 

 sylvania from 1866 till 1873. In the field of min- 

 ing and in the treatment of ores he made many 

 inventions and improvements. A contour map he 

 made in 1869 of the anthracite strata of the Pan- 

 ther Creek valley for the Lehigh Coal and Navi- 

 gation Company is still in use. Complete surveys 

 and contour maps of the Wyoming valley and 

 Cahaba coal-fields which Mr. Rothwell made 

 have, been adopted by the Pennsylvania and 

 United States geological surveys. In 1873 he be- 

 came editor and manager of the Engineering and 

 Mining Journal in New York. For his Mineral 

 Industry: Its Statistics, Technology, and Trade, 

 an annual cyclopaedia of mining, metallurgy, and 

 industrial chemistry, he received the gold medal 

 of the Societe d'Encouragement pour 1'Industrie 

 Nationale of Paris. He also published Universal 

 Bimetallism and An International Monetary 

 Clearing-House, and compiled the gold and silver 

 statistics for the United States census of 1890. 



Rowland, Henry Augustus, physicist, born 

 in Honesdale, Pa., Nov. 27, 1848; died in Balti- 

 more, Md., April 16, 1901. He was graduated at 

 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N. Y., 

 with the degree of C. E. in 1871, and after a year's 

 experience in engineering in railroad work he be- 

 came a teacher in Wooster College, where he was 

 in charge of phys- 

 ics, zoology, and 

 geology. In 1872 

 he returned to Rens- 

 selaer Polytechnic, 

 serving in 1872-73 

 as instructor, and 

 then as Assistant 

 Professor of Phys- 

 ics. His ability 

 soon attracted the 

 attention of his sci- 

 entific colleagues, 

 and in 1875 he was 

 called to the chair 

 of Physics in Johns 

 Hopkins University. 

 He spent a year in 

 Europe purchasing 

 apparatus for the 

 laboratory, and was 

 for some months 

 a student under 

 Helmholtz in Berlin, where he demonstrated that 

 a moving charge of statical electricity has the 

 same magnetic effect as a current. On his re- 

 turn in 1876 he entered upon the duties of his 

 chair in Baltimore, remaining there until his 

 death. The mechanical equivalent of heat, requir- 

 ing more careful thermometric and calorimetric 

 methods than had ever been used, was the first 

 important investigation that he took up in Bal- 

 timore. This led to a study of the measurement 

 of electrical quantities, and he made a careful 

 determination of the ohm, which work he subse- 

 quently extended under the auspices of the Na- 



