Roy Rogers, one of the most influential icons of American popular culture in the mid-20th century, was born Leonard Franklin Sly in Cincinnati on November 5, 1911. He moved to this farm from Portsmouth at age 8 and lived here with his family until the Great Depression. He went to California in 1930 and worked as a truck driver, fruit picker, and country musician before signing a movie contract with Republic Pictures in 1937. Immediately popular, the clean-cut singing cowboy appeared in more than 100 western films, often making six or more movies a year during the 1940s. With his nearly equally famous horse Trigger and his wife and partner Dale Evans, "the Queen of the West," he later starred in more than 100 television episodes of the family-oriented Roy Rogers Show from 1951 to 1957. A perennial hero and "good guy," Rogers personified the mythical American cowboy who always fought fairly and lived by a strong moral code. He died in California on July 6, 1998.