| 776 CHAPTER 40.
BISHOP I. L. ROGERS.
THIS chapter consists of the biography of Bishop I. L. Rogers, the only presiding Bishop ordained during the period of time covered in this volume.
Israel L. Rogers was the first Bishop of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He "was born April 4, 1818, in Renssalaer County, New York, being the eldest of fourteen children born to David and Betsy Allen Rogers. All these children lived to maturity and had families, the total of sixty-two children being born to them.
"The family of David Rogers being in humble circumstances, and so many to be fed and cared for, therefore Israel, the oldest one, thought best to start out for himself. Thus, when he was eighteen years old, he purchased his time from his father, agreeing to pay him $100 for the three years. Then he labored hard in the stone quarries and on the canal and paid this debt to his father.
"Before he was twenty-one years old (on February 24, 1839) he married Miss Mahala Sailsbury, of Chenango County, New York. They were companions in life for over fifty-two years, until her death, September 22, 1892.
"In 1841, when he was twenty-three years old, he became satisfied that he could find better opportunities in the then new western states than existed in New York. So he and his family moved west through Chicago into the Fox River country of Illinois, into the very neighborhood where all his life since then has been passed.
"He first hired out to Benjamin Darnell, south of Sandwich, and the next spring he rented of him a farm on shares. Next he preëmpted land, and by hard and faithful labor and good management, he early laid the foundation of the competence he for so many years enjoyed."-Sandwich Argus.
(page 776) |
