Author: Rogers, James
Biography:
ROGERS, James (1788-1841: ancestry.com)
In the Windsor and Eton Express for 2 Apr. 1825, carpenter and surveyor James Rogers, “Patentee for an Improved Method for Measuring Standing Timber” (sealed 20 Mar. 1824), advertised a 1 May publication date for his volume, Original Experimental Cottage Hymns. To which will be added, A Poem on the Death of the ever-to-be remembered Monarch, George the Third. He stated in the same advertisement that an example of his patented instrument was presently exhibited “at the office of the Berkshire Chronicle, at which place some Tracts of the Author’s are now selling.” The poem appeared later that year under the title A Thought in a Church-Yard. A Poem. The poet’s “Tracts” are untraced. Having received his first order for his invention from the Commissioners of his Majesty’s Woods and Forests, in Apr. 1841 at Bath and in June of that year at Windsor he marketed it to “the noble, rich, and mighty.” Men of “rank, power, and property,” he wrote, had at an early period encouraged him to create the instrument (weight six pounds, available in silver, “or any metal” the purchaser may choose). Besides his invention, his profession, and his publication, the barest information about this poet has been preserved. Along with his seven siblings—Bula, Mary, Samuel, Joseph, Betty, Hannah, and Simon—he was baptized on 20 July 1788 at St Nicholas church in North Bradley, Wiltshire, the children of Samuel Rogers (b 1748) and his wife, Bula Chapman (d 1789). The date of his marriage to Judith Holmes (1787-1836) is uncertain but it probably occurred in or shortly before 1814. The couple had at least five children, each of whom was baptized at St Peter and St Paul Marlborough: Judith, baptized in Mar. 1815; Charles in Nov. 1817; Mary Ann in Jan. 1819; another son named Charles in Sept. 1820; and Sarah Holmes in Mar. 1822. The poet died at Marlborough in Dec. 1841. (ancestry.com 23 Apr. 2024; Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 29 Apr. 1824; Windsor and Eton Express, 5 June 1824) JC