Edward Staniford Rogers was born in the family homestead on Essex Street, in Salem, Massachussets, a descendant of Rev. John Rogers, who was president of Harvard College in 1682-84; his parents were Nathaniel Leverett Rogers, an old-time Salem merchant, and Harriet Wait, his wife.
Edward was educated in Master Ira Cheever's school, made several sea voyages in his father's ships as clerk and supercargo, and then entered the counting room of his father's firm, where he was employed until its dissolution.
In the half-acre garden extending from the house on Essex Street to Federal Street he indulged his taste for horticulture and conducted his experiments in grape hybridization. The garden was quite large for a city lot, although, according to the horticulturist Marshall P. Wilder, it was "150 years old; a cold, matted soil, filled with old apple, and pear trees, currant bushes, flax, and everything mingled in together. It is in a close, hived up place in the city of Salem, and it is a wonder that he [Rogers] ever had a bunch of grapes to show" The suggestion which incited his experiments in hybridizing came from an article by Dr. Lindley of the University of London, printed in the London Horticulturist and reprinted in Downing's Horticulturist for September 1847. This article, "Remarks on Hybridizing Plants, " was a general discussion of the results of plant-breeding practices so far as they were then known. In the summer of 1851, Rogers crossed one of the native American grapes, Vitis labrusca, by two representatives of Vitis vinifera, or European wine grape. The seeds obtained were sown, and from these came forty-five seedlings which finally fruited. These, known as the Rogers Hybrids, were unique in that the standard of quality was very high in each of them, and their weaknesses were also equally distributed. Only one of them, Rogers' No. 15, which was named Agawam, is still in cultivation, but it remains one of the more popular home varieties of grapes. Rogers gained practically no profit from his grapes, since he gave them away freely, especially his better seedlings. His chief claim to remembrance lies not in the varieties which he produced but rather in the impetus his results gave to grape growing in America; never before or since has grape growing in the United States received the attention given it during the decade following the introduction of the Rogers Hybrids. When he left the counting room, for fifteen years he withdrew almost wholly from the public eye and devoted himself to his garden. While he possessed some literary ability and was an extensive reader, he could rarely be drawn into discussion except among those intimate friends who were wont to "drop in" at his long, low greenhouse in the garden or at his office, extemporized in the old colonial barn at the rear of the house. After the death of their mother in 1882, the two brothers moved to another house in Salem, and some years later, after his brother died, Edward Rogers bought a place in Peabody, Massachussets, where he continued his grape-breeding experiments. None of his later seedlings ever showed promise equal to the original forty-five, however, and none was ever introduced.
By temperament, Edward Rogers was quiet and retiring.
An accident which resulted in permanent lameness kept him from much physical labor during his last years and probably in some measure hastened his death. He never married and was the last survivor of his family.
