The Founders of Rogers City

The Founders of Rogers City. Historic Site No. 19. , The Village of Rogers, now Rogers City, was founded by a group of five men from Detroit who wanted to go into the timber business and establish a community to support it. The leader of the group was a German immigrant by the name of Albert Molitor, on the left of the array. Molitor had served briefly in the Union Army during the Civil War, then went to work for the Lake Survey office in Detroit. The next photo is William Rogers, a West Point graduate and a second lieutenant in the Army when he was assigned to the Detroit office of the Lake Survey. Rogers became Molitor's partner in the Rogers-Molitor Sawmill Co. To the right of Rogers is J. Paul Mayer, a civilian employee of the Lake Survey, who became Molitor's partner after Rogers withdrew. Like Molitor and Rogers, Mayer purchased extensive timberlands around Rogers. This grainy photo of Mayer was copied from an anniversary issue of the Presque Isle County Advance and is the only photo of Mayer known to exist. On the right is another civilian employee of the Lake Survey, Frederic Denny Larke, an immigrant from England who became Molitor's business manager in Rogers. The fifth member of the group who founded Rogers was John Baptist Raymond, a young man who had been born to one of Detroit's old French Families. No photos of Raymond have been located. Both Raymond and Larke have numerous descendants in the Rogers City area yet today., In 1867 and 1868, Molitor had purchased a dozen parcels of timberlands in Presque Isle County, but he needed an investor who could buy more land, including the site for a village, and who could purchase a sawmill. William Rogers was able to fill that need. It is unlikely that he personally had enough money, but he had an uncle who was "one of the richest men and a prominent citizen of Philadelphia," and he was an uncle who was devoted to his nephew., Rogers and Molitor first attempted to purchase the little lumbering village of Crawford's Quarry, located where the Calcite plant is today, just a mile down the beach from Rogers City. However, the Crawford's rejected their offer of what was supposedly a "fabulous sum"., Their second choice of location was a parcel just north of Crawford's Quarry, but they found that piece was owned by a Detroiter by the name of John Winder. Winder was a land speculator, and he wasn't eager to sell either. It took almost a year for Molitor and Rogers to convince Winder to sell them the land. Rogers didn't finalize the purchase of the 98.6-acre parcel until November 27th, 1869. He paid about $290 or around $3 an acre., A plat for the town to be called "Rogers City" was drawn up by Edward Molitor, Albert Molitor's brother, a civil engineer who was employed by the Lake Survey as a cartographer. It was filed July of 1871. No information exists on how the community's name was chosen. Perhaps it reflected William Rogers' critical financial investments. Ironically, William Rogers never lived in the town that bore his name: in fact, he is only known to have visited here twice. When the village held its first election of officers, Rogers donated a block of land in the center of the community for construction of a courthouse. Five years later, local officials were informed that Rogers was not in fact a "city" and thus could not be called a city, at which time the name was officially changed to the Village of Rogers. It was officially incorporated as a home rule city in 1945, at which time its name was changed back to Rogers City.