Neighbors, and neighbors

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Comments:
: "James Rogers ... sent as deligates to a General Convention atDorset (25 July to 25 September), convened to discuss the feasibility of establishing a new province from the area of the New Hampshire Grants.  ... While James supported the creation of a new province, he could not accept a challenge to the King's legal authority....

: "Constantly harassed for his Loyalist stand and principles [read: 'standing up for what he believed in'], James was forced to abandon his family and property in April [1777] to seek the relative safety of the British colours.  Numerous documents suggest he was the only member of the township to flee...

: "No evidence of formal confiscation of the Rogers estate in Kent has been found, and it appears that no legal action was in fact taken, although his lands were treated as having passed to the State [hmmm... sounds like tyranny and absolutism].  His assets were formally seized in New Hampshire and New York , and he was deemed an enemy of the states by acts of the legislatures...

: "The Rogers' children, aged fourteen, twelve, eight, five, and three years, were all living at home during this period.  It must have been very difficult for Margaret, surrounded by those who were once her neighbors and friends but who now treated her family harshly and with contempt.  As the conflict continued to escalate, the conditions under which the family was forced to live deteriorated.  Like the dependants of many other Tories, they became public charges without any means of support, and local governments were loath to expend any funds for maintenance."

: " 'That his Brother, Major James Rogers, was a Captain of a Company of Rangers during the whole Course of the Last War served part of that time under the Memorialist's Command on the Northern frontiers of New York, After at the Seige of Louisbourg, ans was with his Company at the Reductino of this important place.  - and has been totally ruined Since the Commencement of this present Rebellion in America, plundered of his Estate, Driven from Wifve & Six helpless young children, who are now in the greatest distress & want, not being more than forty eight Miles Eastwardly of Ticonderoga and Confined to a Hutt or rather a sml Hovel (by the Rebels) with only the Milk of one Cow for their sustenance with the addition of perhaps a few Ears of Indian Corn, the produce of Lands which my brother once Could Justly Call his own Consisting of more than Twenty Thousand Acres - And that his Wife & Children are Obliged to gather this Corn, thrash it themselves and carry it on their backs to a Rebel Mill, the Miller who extracts an Extraordinary  tole; and many more families of Loyalists are in the same or worse Situation in the four Colonies of New England watched by the Committees and Rebel Guards...'" 

: {Memorial from Lieut. Col. Robert Rogers to General Haldimand, 1780).

: From "Rising Above Circumstances, The Rogers Family in Colonial America", Robert J. Rogers, U.E., Sheltus and Picard, 1998.

: Aye. So?

: Things were done.  No one was spared.

: Those considerations are subordinate to the interests of the Continental Congress.  A terrible feature of war here in the Americas, Major.  Best keep your eye fixed on your duty.

: YHOS,
: Pvt. Chauncey Goodrich,
: King's Rangers, Pritchards Coy.


: : Which brings us to this day, a celebration of our country.     I find that I don’t know my
: : neighbors as well as I should and that makes ME the problem - I’m making us all weak. 
: : America is country if neighbors.... it always has been and I’m the one who is being un-American. 

: : Then I remember something from my Navy days.  They made us fliers go to a school to learn
: : how to survive imprisonment.  If a learned nothing else, I learned that I must make contact with
: : my neighbor....  If that is not allowed.... if that is not possible... if I am placed in a solitary cell...I
: : am to tap on the walls of my cell... and make contact with the man in the cell next to me. 

: : It is a great day to tap on the walls...to meet my neighbors...to shake their hands... to sit on the
: : front porch with them... to light fireworks with the teenagers...to share food and laughter.... to
: : break the ice and start being a neighbor that can be relied upon and can rely on the others.  That
: : is what is patriotic, that is being a great American.... that is the vision of the founding fathers.

: : HAPPY FOURTH.     


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