Richard Reid Rogers

Richard Reid Rogers (December 4, 1867 - November 10, 1949) was a prominent United States lawyer, specializing in transit law.

He was born on December 4, 1867 in Bourbon County, Kentucky to Benjamin F. Rogers.

Rogers graduated in 1886 from Princeton University before studying law at the University of Virginia. He married Eunice L. Sanlin (1879-1945) on June 25, 1891in Madison, Tennessee. Their daughter Elizabeth Reid Rogers married into the German nobility and the House of Hesse, by marrying Prince Christian of Hesse-Philippsthal-Barchfeld and being titled Baroness von Barchfeld.

He served as the general counsel to both the Isthmian Canal Commission and later the Panama Railroad Company. He subsequently was counsel to the Metropolitan Street Railway and several of its successor companies.

On June 20, 1906, Rogers was appointed as general counsel to the Isthmian Canal Commission, to replace outgoing Governor Charles Edward Magoon. In November of that year, President Theodore Roosevelt temporarily abolished the office of Governor of the Panama Canal Zone, to give greater autonomy to the chief engineer of the canal project. This order placed all of the duties of the Governor on the general counsel, in effect making Rogers the Governor in all but title. (Though he was not required to govern from the Canal Zone itself and he remained in Washington, D.C..)

He died on November 10, 1949 in Mount Sterling, Kentucky.