Rogers, James Grafton, 1883-1971

Colorado attorney, educator, author, statesman.

United States assistant secretary of state, 1931-1933.

Biographical/Historical Note

United States assistant secretary of state, 1931-1933.

James Grafton Rogers (1883-1971) was a Denver attorney, educator, author, composer, and statesman. He was also closely involved in a number of organizations, including the City Club of Denver, the University Club, Colorado Mountain Club, Denver Civic League, Denver Council of Boy Scouts, and the Historical Society of Colorado. Rogers, on the invitation of Robert B. Marshall, Chief Geographer of the U. S. Geological Survey, drafted a bill creating Rocky Mountain National Park, which was introduced in the House of Representatives on 6 February 1913 and in the Senate the following day. He was Dean of both the University of Denver (1927-28) and University of Colorado (1928-1931; 1933-35) law schools, and served as President of the Colorado Bar Association. Rogers took a two-year leave of absence to serve as Assistant Secretary of State (1931-1933) in Washington under President Herbert Hoover.

Regarding his gift to Special Collections of works by Gilbert White, Rogers wrote in 1954 from Georgetown, Colorado, that he was "introduced to Selborne and White's book [see below] by Theodore Roosevelt and Lord Grey of Fallodon then Foreign Minister of Britain on a trip to Selborne about 1908." Of his gift of the The History and Antiquities of London (1813) by Thomas Pennant [see below], Rogers writes that "these two volumes were given me by John Stockbridge Barrows (an advertizing man, graduate of the University of Colorado, book collector and incorribible practical joker who knew of my Selborne collection, had one of his own and presented me the volumes as a purported gift of Q[u]een Marie of Rumania whom I had helped entertain in Denver...)." Barrows likewise sent a copy of Gilbert White's The Natural History of Selborne (1924), "as a pretended gift again from Queen Marie of Rumania ... on the fly leaf is a purported letter from Queen Marie and her son Prince Nicholas. All nonsense. It deserves to be preserved not only as a Selborne volume among many editions but a sample of a joke by one of the University of Colorado's brilliant but uncelebrated graduates."

Edna Davis Romig (b. 1889) was a professor of English for 36 years, most of them spent at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She published several volumes of poetry and a book on Walt Whitman. Friends with Robert and Elinor Frost, Romig was asked by the couple to write their biography, a project that was researched but never completed. She retired from teaching in 1961 and moved to Estes Park, Colorado.