Ancestors

Elder William Leroy Rogers

William Leroy Rogers was born on 13 May 1838 in Jackson County, Alabama. His gravestone gives that day. In his own letter he wrote "May the 14th 1838". The family farmed in Crow Creek country, where the Tennessee line ran through the settlement and kin lived on both sides of it. He was named for his grandfather William Rogers, who died in 1816.

He was the second child of George Rogers and Eliza McCrary. The 1850 census finds him at twelve in his father's Jackson County household, with his sisters Elizabeth, Ann, Nancy and Drucilla and his brothers Samuel and James. A neighbour of his father's was Jerry Matthews, a wealthy planter whose daughter he would marry.

In October 1858 he joined the "old Baptists" in Alabama. These were the Primitive Baptists, sometimes called Hard Shell Baptists, who rejected paid ministers, missionary societies and Sunday schools. Their preachers farmed through the week and preached without salary.

On 26 November 1860 he married Sarah Ann Matthews, the young widow of Samuel B. Gover. She brought her Gover son, Banks Tolbert, into the marriage. Their own first child, Samuel Davis, was born in 1861.

He went to war with his father and two brothers. His brother Jim was killed at Chickamauga at eighteen. A memorial compiled for his grave gives his own rank as second lieutenant of Company C, 18th Battalion Alabama Infantry, known as Gunter's Battalion of Partisan Rangers. That rank rests on the memorial, not on the service record.

In 1872 he was ordained to the ministry in an old Baptist church in Franklin County, Tennessee. That June his wife left the Presbyterians and joined his church. In September 1872 the family set out for Texas. The whole Rogers clan followed in 1872 and 1873. They settled first around Acton and Glen Rose, where relatives had been going since 1856.

The 1880 census finds the family in Justice Precinct 4 of Hood County. The household held William, Sarah Ann and ten children, from Samuel, eighteen, down to the baby Clamenza. Three of the children had been born in Texas. The enumerator wrote the name as "Roggers" and his middle initial as C.

He and Sarah Ann had ten children. Nine were alive in 1922. Their daughter Druza Ann, born in August 1870, married the saddlemaker Samuel Dale Myres in 1894. Druza was named for his aunt Druzie McCrary, whose birth in 1831 cost her mother's life. Two of the other children carried the names of Sarah Ann's brother Michael Newton Matthews and her sister Clamenza.

Sarah Ann died at Acton on 17 August 1892. A memorial compiled for his grave gives a second marriage, in 1894, to Mary Susan Crozier.

He preached for many years. In old age he lived at Cleburne. There, on 15 July 1922, at the age of eighty four, he wrote the long letter that is the only account of his family's past. He wrote it to his grandson James Byron Rogers of Des Moines, New Mexico, who had just married a Miss Rogers. The purpose was to assure the young couple that they were not kin.

He died at Cleburne on 30 January 1924. He was buried at Fall Creek Cemetery in Hood County, beside Sarah Ann. His stone is carved with an open Bible and the words "ELD. WILLIAM LEROY ROGERS". Below the dates is the verse "I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am, there ye may be also." A photograph shows him in old age, standing outdoors in a pale suit, with a white beard.

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Cite: Heirology, "Elder William Leroy Rogers (1838-1924)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/elder-william-leroy-rogers-1838-1924-3d3bb0.