employed to "watch and ward" the frontiers, and protect their
defenceless communities from the barbarous assaults of Indians, turned
upon them from St. Francis and Crown Point. Robert Rogers had in him
just the stuff required in such a soldier. We shall not, therefore, be
surprised to find him on scouting duty in the Merrimack Valley, under
Captain Ladd, as early as 1746, when he was but nineteen years of
age;[A] and, three years later, engaged in the same service, under
Captain Ebenezer Eastman, of Pennycook.[B] Six years afterwards, in
1753, the muster rolls show him to have been a member of Captain John
Goff's company, and doing like service.[C] Such was the training of a
self-reliant mind and a hardy physique for the ranging service, in which
they were soon to be employed.

[Footnote A: New Hampshire Adjutant General's Report, 1866, vol. 2, p.
95.]

[Footnote B: Same, p. 99.]

[Footnote C: Same, p. 118.]

I ought, perhaps, to mention, that in 1749, as Londonderry became filled
to overflowing with repeated immigrations from the North of Ireland,
James Rogers, the father of Robert, a proprietor, and one of the early
settlers of the township, removed therefrom to the woods of Dunbarton,
and settled anew in a section named Montelony, from an Irish place in
which he had once lived.[A] This was before the settlement of the
township, when its territory existed as an unseparated part only of the
public domain. He may, quite likely, have been attracted hither by an
extensive beaver meadow or pond, which would, with little improvement,
afford grass for his cattle while he was engaged in clearing the rich