To a stranger in these parts, it is a wonder how the inhabitants have maintained themselves in such an apparently sterile and rocky region.[183] In fact, these people did not depend upon agriculture for a livelihood. Although thus isolated, they were from the first thrifty, ingenious and enterprising. The property of the first settlers having been divided and subdivided among large families, it was not long before their descendants must either desert their own community or invent methods of bringing into Quakertown adequate profits from without. Consequently, we find them, early in the nineteenth century, selling, in neighboring towns, cloths, threads, yarn and other commodities of their own manufacture. A large proportion of the men learned trades and worked away from home during the week. Many of them were stone-masons, a trade easily learned in this rocky region, and one in which they became experts. In later times, we find some of them extensively engaged in raising small fruits, especially strawberries. Footnote 183: Quakertown is said not to be so rocky and sterile as it appears to a person riding over the road, but to have a considerable amount of good farming-land. Although, with the decline of persecution, no new leader arose to rank with those of the past, bright minds have not been lacking in later days in this fast thinning community, which, like other remote country places, has suffered by the emigration of its youth to more promising fields of action. Timothy Watrous, 2d, invented the first machine for cutting cold iron into nails. He also made an entire dock himself. Samuel Chapman, a descendant of John Rogers and John Waterhouse, is said to have made and sailed the first steamship on the Mississippi. He founded large iron-works in New Orleans. His son Nathan was one of the founders of the Standard Iron Works of Mystic. Jonathan Whipple, a descendant of John Rogers, having a deaf and dumb son, conceived the idea of teaching him to speak and to understand by the motion of the lips, by which method he soon spoke sonorously and distinctly, and became a man of integrity and cultivation. Zerah C. Whipple, a grandson of Jonathan, becoming interested in this discovery, resolved to devote his life to its perfection. He invented the Whipple Natural Alphabet, and with the aid of his grandfather, Jonathan, founded The Home School for the deaf and dumb, at Mystic. Julia Crouch, author of “Three Successful Girls” (a descendant of John Rogers and John Bolles), was a Rogerene of Quakertown. Ida Whipple Benham, a well-known poet, and for many years an efficient member of the Peace Society, was of Quakertown origin.[184] Footnote 184: The following is from a poem by Mrs. Benham, entitled “Peace.” Where is the nation brave enough to say, “I have no need of sword, or shield, or gun; I will disarm before the world this day; I will stand free, though lonely, ’neath the sun.