My Genealogy Hound

THOMAS PIERCE ROGERS, M. D., Bloomington, whose portrait appears in this work, was born Dec. 4, 1812, in Columbiana Co., Ohio; his ancestors came from the north of Ireland; his grandfather, George Augustus Rogers, was born about the year 1735, in the north of Ireland, and was educated at Oxford for the ministry, but gave up that calling and accepted a commission in the British army; he came to this country as Colonel in the army under Gen. Braddock, and was at the battle of Bloody Run (or Braddock’s defeat), and also with Gen. Wolfe when he stormed Quebec; after peace was declared, he returned to England, resigned his commission and came to the United States about the year 1774; his son, Alexander Rogers, the father of Dr. Rogers, whose sketch we are writing, was born in 1773; the family first settled in Frederick Co., Md., where it stayed until 1786, when it moved to Fayette Co., Penn.; there Mr. Alexander Rogers married Catharine Wallahan, who was born in Carlisle, Penn. In the year 1798, Dr. Rogers’ grandfather, father and all their connections moved on the extreme frontier, then the wilderness of Ohio; there his father settled on a farm. The subject of this sketch received such an education as could be obtained in the little, round-log schoolhouse of a new country; at the age of 17, he went to a select school at New Lisbon, and finished his education at a Quaker institution at Salem ; he then returned home, working one or two years, and continuing his course of study; he chose the profession of medicine, and began his study in Tuscarawas Co., Ohio; he finished his course of study in Philadelphia, and returned to Tuscarawas Co., where he practiced in company with Dr. Lewis; in the spring of 1838, he started for Illinois on horseback, and came to Marshall Co.; and, in the month of March, located at Decatur, Macon Co., and soon afterward formed a co-partnership with Dr. Thomas H. Reed, from Nashville, Tenn.; Dr. Rogers afterward moved to Washington, Tazewell Co., and formed a co-partnership with Dr. G. P. Wood, which continued for seven years. In June, 1840, he married Miss Harriet Wilcox, of North Bergen, Genesee Co., N. Y.; she died four years after her marriage; they had one child—Harriet Julia, who died at the age of 9 months. In May, 1846, he married Mrs. Minerva Burhance, a widow lady with one daughter. In 1848 Dr. Rogers learned from Stephen A. Douglas, in Peoria, that the Illinois Central Railroad would surely be built, and this decided him to move to Bloomington for a permanent home; he moved to Bloomington in March, 1849, and continued the practice of medicine up to 1867, when he retired from his profession, having been a successful practitioner for thirty years; he then engaged in agricultural pursuits. While practicing his profession, he was three times chosen a delegate to the National Medical Conventions; he was twice chosen a delegate to State Medical Conventions. Dr. Rogers has been more or less connected with politics since coming to the West; while at Decatur, he held the office of Postmaster for two years; in 1848, he was selected at the Convention, at the village of Waynesville, to be a candidate for State Senator, but was defeated; in 1862, he again received the nomination of his party for State Senator, but was again defeated; he has been honored by his party by being made a member of every Democratic State Convention, except one, since 1844; has been chairman of the Democratic Central Committee, McLean Co., for eighteen years out of twenty-four; was appointed a delegate from Illinois to the Convention at Baltimore, which nominated Franklin Pierce; he was an alternate delegate to the Charleston Convention; was a delegate to the Baltimore Convention, when Douglas was nominated. When the war came, the Doctor took strong ground for the Union, and did much work in getting volunteers, and took the stump and advocated crushing the rebellion out by the power of arms. In 1864, he was a delegate to the Convention which nominated McClellan for President; when the Liberal movement was inaugurated, Dr. Rogers moved actively and efficiently in the matter, and was placed in nomination as its candidate for the Legislature under the minority representation system; he was elected a member of the Lower House of the Assembly, and has been re-elected every two years since; and is at present serving in that capacity, and is recognized as one of the most active and far-sighted of its members.