[4] In 1739 when Rogers was eight years old, his family relocated to the Great Meadow district of New Hampshire near present-day Concord,[5] where James founded a settlement on 2,190 acres (8.9 km2) of land which he called Munterloney, after a hilly place in County Londonderry, Ireland.

The British in America suffered a string of defeats including Braddock's at the Battle of the Monongahela trying to capture Fort Duquesne.

[7] In 1756, Rogers arrived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and began to muster soldiers for the British Crown, using the authority vested in him by Colonel Winslow.

Rogers' recruitment drive was well supported by the frightened and angry provincials due to attacks by American Indians along the frontier.

They frequently undertook winter raids against French towns and military emplacements, traveling on sleds, crude snowshoes, and even ice skates across frozen rivers.

Rogers' Rangers were never fully respected by the British regulars, yet they were one of the few non-Indian forces able to operate in the inhospitable region despite harsh winter conditions and mountainous terrain.

[3][10] Rogers showed an unusual talent for commanding his unit in conditions to which the regular armies of the day were unaccustomed.

At the time, the British could do little more than fight defensive campaigns around Lake Champlain, Crown Point, Ticonderoga, and the upper Hudson.

[11] During this time, the rangers proved indispensable; they grew gradually to twelve companies, as well as several additional contingents of Indians who had pledged their allegiance to the British cause.

Major General Jeffrey Amherst, the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of British forces in North America, had a brilliant and definitive idea.

He dispatched Rogers and his rangers on an expedition far behind enemy lines to the west against the Abenakis at Saint-Francis in Quebec, a staging base for Indian raids into New England.

Rogers led a force of two hundred rangers from Crown Point, New York, deep into French territory to Saint-Francis.

Following the 3 October 1759 attack and successful destruction of Saint-Francis, Rogers' force ran out of food during their retreat back through the rugged wilderness of northern Vermont.

Rogers left them encamped, and returned a few days later with food and relief forces from Fort at Number 4, now Charlestown, New Hampshire, the nearest British town.

No longer preoccupied with military affairs, Rogers returned to New England to marry Elizabeth Browne in June, 1761, and set up housekeeping with her in Concord, New Hampshire.

In 1761, Rogers purchased a commission commanding a British Independent Company serving in South Carolina during the Anglo-Cherokee War.

However, Pontiac was ready, supposedly alerted by French settlers, and he defeated the British at Parent's Creek two miles north of the fort.

To recoup his finances, Robert engaged briefly in a business venture with the fur trader John Askin near Detroit.

The King appointed Rogers governor of Michilimackinac (Mackinaw City, Michigan) with a charter to look for the passage, and he returned to North America.

Upon his return to America, Rogers moved with his wife to the fur-trading outpost of Fort Michilimackinac and began his duties as royal governor.

As an aristocrat and political intriguer, Gage viewed Rogers as a provincial upstart who posed a threat to his newly acquired power, due to his friendship with Amherst.

Rogers perceived a need for unity and a stronger government, and he negotiated with the Indians, parlayed with the French, and developed a plan for a province in Michigan to be administered by a governor and Privy Council reporting to the king.

Potter swore in an affidavit that Rogers had said that he would offer his province to the French if the British authorities failed to approve his method of governance.

The Americans were as out of touch with Rogers as he was with them, looking upon him as the noted ranger leader and expecting him to behave as one; they were at a total loss to explain his drunken and licentious behavior.

At that time, Rogers was perhaps suffering from the alcoholism that blighted his later life and led to the loss of his family, land, money, and friends.

Rogers was arrested by the local Committee of Safety as a possible spy and released on parole that he would not serve against the colonies.

In Tiffany's account, Rogers did not believe Hale's cover story that he was a teacher, and lured him into his own betrayal by pretending to be a patriot spy himself.

A return home now was impossible; Hale's execution and Rogers raising troops against the colonials seemed to confirm Washington's suspicions.

At Washington's prompting, the New Hampshire legislature passed two decrees regarding Rogers: one a proscription, and the other a divorce from his wife on grounds of abandonment and infidelity.

After a brief sojourn in England, Rogers returned in 1779 to raise the King's Rangers in Nova Scotia for General Sir Henry Clinton.