John Rogers

Who was John Rogers?

John Rogers was an English academic in early Colonial America. Eldest son of minister Nathaniel Rogers, he was born in Coggeshall, a small town in Essex, and immigrated to New England with his family in 1636. In 1649, at age 19, in the recent settlement of Cambridge, he earned a B.A. from Harvard College which, only seven years earlier, in 1642, had graduated its first class of students. In 1652, following an additional three years of study, he received an M.A. and, in 1660, married Elizabeth Denison of Ipswich.

Residing in Ipswich and, despite neither having been ordained as a minister or trained as a physician, Rogers practiced medicine and assisted in the ministry of his brother-in-law, local historian William Hubbard, whose service as Ipswich pastor ultimately extended for more than 50 years. In 1682, Rogers was appointed President of Harvard, but having held the position for only two years, died suddenly at the age of 54.