Charles Britton Rogers was born in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin in 1871, the son of a lawyer, W. H. Rogers. His mother, before her marriage, was Angenette (Nettie) Horton, a music teacher. The parents moved to Wisconsin from New England in the 1860s and became active members of the Universalist church as well as leaders in the civic life of Fort Atkinson.
When Charles and his brother, Frank, were small boys their mother's uncle, Reverend Joshua Britton, lived with them. Reverend Britton had preached in New England for thirty-eight years, and moved to Wisconsin with his wife in 1869, taking up residence with the Rogers because they had reared Angenette Horton. Reverend Britton had charge of a church in Fort Atkinson for one year, and continued to take part in Universalist meetings and the distribution of church literature in Wisconsin.
Charles B. Rogers attended the University of Wisconsin and received his law degree there in 1895. He returned to Fort Atkinson to practice with his father, served as district attorney for Jefferson County, 1898-1902, and was Jefferson County Judge from 1906 to 1914. Always interested in the University of Wisconsin, he served as president of the Alumni Association in 1916-1917, and was a member of its Board of Directors. During World War I both he and his wife, Effie, were active in war work, he as chairman of the Speaker's Bureau for the Liberty Loan drives, and she as chairman of a county organization cooperating in the foreign aid project called “The Fatherless Children of France.” Rogers was a Democrat, and a strong advocate of the Single Tax.
He practiced in Fort Atkinson almost until the time of his death in 1960, and through many years his daughter, Neal, served as his secretary. During the last fourteen years he wrote a series of articles for the Daily Jefferson County Union, called “Reminiscences of a Country Lawyer,” for which he drew on his extensive diaries.
