Nathaniel Peabody Rogers (1794 - 1846)
Born at Plymouth (NH); died at Concord (NH).
Lawyer, Abolitionist newspaper editor and philanthropist.
Portrait by U.D. Tenney, 1876
Presented to the State, 1876.

Rogers (1794 - 1846) was born at Plymouth (NH). A graduate of Dartmouth College (Class of 1816), Rogers read law for three years and was admitted to the New Hampshire Bar in 1819. He then established a long-lived law practice at Plymouth.

Beginning in the 1830s New Hampshire politics were filled with the issues of slavery and states' rights. In 1835 Rogers began to write for the Herald of Freedom, an anti-slavery newspaper published at Concord. In 1838 he gave up his Plymouth law practice and moved to Concord to become editor of the newspaper. His articles were widely reprinted in the New York Tribune and other anti-slavery newspapers, under the name of "The Old Man of the Mountain."

In 1840 New Hampshire Abolitionists sent Rogers as their delegate to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, at London, England. The Convention refused to seat several American women delegates, however, and Rogers withdrew in protest. He returned to America to find himself a hero for his support of equality of the sexes, as well as for equality of color. Rogers had several offers to head major newspapers, and he spoke publicly on issues of temperance, women's rights and the abolition of slavery. But his health was poor and he died at fifty-two years of age, at Concord (NH).

Reference: Charles H. Bell, The Bench and Bar of New Hampshire (1894); Parker Pillsbury, "Nathaniel Peabody Rogers", Granite Monthly vol. IV no. 7 (April 1881); Ezra S. Stearns, History of Plymouth, New Hampshire (1906).