It was by the instinct of self-preservation combined with conscious inability to secure any adequate outside footing in the new state of affairs, that the small but compact band at Quakertown, beholding with dismay and disapproval the breaking up of the main body on the New London side, resolved to prevent such a disbanding of their own Society, by carefully bringing up their children in the faith and as carefully avoiding contact with other denominations. It was a heroic purpose, the more so because such a policy of isolation was so evidently perilous to the race. Not so evident was the fact that such exclusiveness must eventually destroy the sect which they so earnestly desired to preserve. Such, as has been seen, was not the policy of that founder whose flock were “scattered throughout New England,” and some of the most efficient of whose co-workers were drawn from the midst of an antagonistic denomination; neither was it the policy of him who carried his Petition not only to the General Court of Connecticut, but to that of Massachusetts. Yet it was no ordinary man who carried out the policy above outlined, with a straightforward purpose and vigorous leadership, in the person of elder Zephania Watrous, a grandson of John Waterhouse. John Waterhouse was living in 1773, at which date he was eighty-three years of age.[172] Considerably previous to that time he must have been succeeded by some younger man. Footnote 172: At the same date, Andrew Davis must also have been advanced in years. Elder Timothy Watrous, the Groton leader, who next appears to view, was a son of John Waterhouse, born in 1740. He is said to have been an able preacher and a man of the highest degree of probity. Supposing John Waterhouse to have been in active service to his seventy-fifth year, Timothy could have succeeded him at the age of twenty-four, at which age the latter took part in the great countermove of 1764-66. His experience in this conflict is given in his own words:—