JAMES BLYTHE ROGERS. 369 



telligence, had trained for the office. It is conjectured that he 

 acquired his classical learning from a private tutor at the 

 house of a kinsman." The father of Sarah Kerr evidently did 

 not believe in the law of primogeniture, for he had exacted, 

 as a condition of his daughter's marriage to Robert Rogers, a 

 settlement of all the latter's lands upon the children of this 

 union, share and share alike. Accordingly Patrick, although 

 the eldest child, could expect only one twelfth of .his father's 

 landed estate, and must prepare himself for some other occu- 

 pation than that of a landlord. " Entertaining opinions not 

 rigidly orthodox, he was unwilling to enter the clerical profes- 

 sion, though he had the example of two uncles who were clergy- 

 men." All things considered, a commercial career seemed best, 

 and he therefore entered a counting house in Dublin. When 

 the Irish rebellion broke out, in the spring of 1798, he con- 

 tributed to Dublin newspapers certain articles inimical to the 

 Government, on account of which he was obliged to leave the 

 country. At that period ships plied directly between Ireland 

 and Philadelphia, and on one of these he embarked, landing at 

 his destination in August, after a passage of eighty-four days. 



In the following May Mr. Rogers obtained an appoint- 

 ment as a tutor in the University of Pennsylvania, and soon 

 afterward began to study medicine under the famous Dr. Ben- 

 jamin S. Barton. Mr. Rogers was married January 2, 1801, his 

 wife being the youngest of the three orphan daughters of a 

 Scotch father and an English mother. Their father, James 

 Blythe, had been a stationer and newspaper publisher in Lon- 

 donderry, whither he had gone from Glasgow. After the 

 death of both parents the three sisters had come to America, 

 where they were received by a cousin, Mrs. Thomas Moore. 

 At the time of his marriage Mr. Rogers was described as " a 

 tall, erect man, of grave deportment, having dark hair well 

 sprinkled with gray, and soft sleepy eyes. He played the vio- 

 lin and sang well, but never in company or in the presence of 

 strangers, because such performance or display seemed to him 

 inconsistent with the dignity of a gentleman." 



After receiving his medical degree from the University of 

 Pennsylvania, in June, 1802, Dr. Rogers began the practise of 

 his profession in Philadelphia. He also took private pupils 

 and lectured to classes in botany, chemistry, and other 

 sciences. He was called to Ireland in 1803 to settle the 



