Rogers, Timothy, 1756–1834

Timothy Rogers (1756–1834) was a Quaker settler. He is notable for founding Quaker settlements that eventually became Newmarket and Pickering in what is now Ontario, Canada.

Rogers was born into poverty in Lyme, Connecticut Colony, on May 22, 1756. He was born out of wedlock to Timothy Rogers Sr. (1735-1774) and Mary Huntley (1731-) and treated like an orphan. Rogers spent most of his childhood hired out to earn his own keep, and had very little formal education. He moved with an uncle to Nine Partners, New York, around the age of six. Though raised in Baptist circles, in his early twenties, Rogers joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Rogers and his first wife Sarah Wilde pioneered farms in Danby, Vermont; Saratoga, New York; and Ferrisburgh, Vermont. The family would buy, or be granted, a plot of undeveloped land, develop it, then sell it and take the profits to buy a bigger plot.

In 1795, Rogers accompanied Quaker minister Joshua Evans eastward on a visit to Friends in Nova Scotia, including Samuel Moore in Annapolis County and Seth Coleman in Dartmouth. However, he decided to head west into Upper Canada for the location of his next settlement.

In 1797 Rogers requested permission from his monthly meeting to create a new settlement to the west, but was denied. However, his sense of calling remained and, in the winter of 1800-1801 Rogers led a group of Quaker settler families from Vermont to the Yonge Street area of Upper Canada (now the town of Newmarket, Ontario). This group of colonists met all the conditions of land grants, and by 1804 they were also recognized as an official meeting of the Religious Society of Friends.

In 1809, Rogers started a second Quaker colony in Pickering. He believed this was his calling in life, as attested in his journal. There were already Quaker colonies at Pelham and Black Creek on the Niagara Peninsula and at Adolphustown on the Bay of Quinte that had been started by Loyalists fleeing persecution during the American Revolutionary War. Rogers saw the need to have a Quaker meetinghouse at a central location between Newmarket and the earlier colonies, and hoped that Pickering could become the home of a yearly meeting for Friends in Canada.

Rogers made the move to Pickering in 1809 and developed mills on Duffin's Creek. In 1810 he recruited a group of settlers for the area from the United States. Rogers's vision for the town did come true, though he did not live to see it: the first gathering of Canada Yearly Meeting was at Pickering in 1867.

Rogers's first wife Sarah Wilde (b. 1759, m. 1776) died in early 1812. Late the next year Rogers remarried to Anna Harned (1780-1846) of Woodbridge, New Jersey.

Rogers died in 1834, after 2 marriages and 20 children. He is buried in the Friends Cemetery at Mill Street south of Kingston Road in Ajax, Ontario. His journal has been re-published by the Canadian Friends Historical Association.

Adapted from Wikipedia (accessed 2024-02-01) in consultation with the Journal of Timothy Rogers (Densmore and Schrauwers, eds., 2000).