The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 32, July 1928 - April, 1929 Page: 259

THE
SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
VOL. XXXII APRIL, 1929 No. 4
The publication committee and the editors disclaim responsibility for views expressed by
contributors to THE QUARTERLY
THE DIARY AND LETTERS OF WILLIAM P. ROGERS,
1846-1862
EDITED BY ELEANOR DAMON PACE
[The writer of the diary that follows was, at the time it was
written, a captain of volunteers with Taylor's army in Mexico, but
he is best known to Texans as Colonel William P. Rogers of
Houston, Texas.
Although his father, Timothy Rogers, was at the time living
in Alabama, William Rogers was born in Georgia, December 27,
1819, while his parents were there on a visit. Not long after-
wards, the family moved to Mississippi and settled on a large
plantation near Aberdeen, and it was there that his youth was
spent.
Timothy Rogers, having one son who was a lawyer, decided
that the second one, William, should be a physician, sending him,
accordingly, to a medical college much against his own inclination.
The office that was opened for William's practice in Pontotoc was
occupied only until he was twenty-one, when he sold out and
began to study law. This caused a breach with his father which
was not healed for many years.
He married Martha Halbert, of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, January
15, 1840.
When the war with Mexico broke out, William Rogers was a
young lawyer of twenty-six, rapidly gaining prominence at the
bar in Aberdeen. As soon as the call for volunteers came, he
raised a company from among his friends and acquaintances in
the neighborhood and offered to go to the front. This band, known
as Company K of the Mississippi Rifles, was placed in the regi-
ment commanded by Colonel Jefferson Davis and Lieutenant-