Robert Rogers of the Rangers

On a frontier where individualism flourished, New Hampshire's consummate woodsman was just the leader to bring his men back safely from deep in dangerous country, even in stormy, freezing weather. "The famous Major Rogers" renown was such that he became perhaps the single-best-known American on both sides of the Atlantic. In October 1765, a private audience with young King George III led, eleven months later, to the launching of an expedition to find the long-dreamed-of Northwest passage to the Pacific - forty years before Lewis and Clark.  But who was this frontier farmer, raised in Dunbarton? Thirty years after his death in obscurity in May 1795, Rogers' exploits were mined by James Fenimore Cooper for his best-selling novels, and in the 20th and 21st centuries, for other histories, novels, movies, and television. George Morrison takes us along on a journey from colonial North America to the 21st century.

Funded project of New Hampshire Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.