While referring to Backus, we will note a statement made by him to the effect that some of the Rogerene youth having put an end to their own lives, this was a cause of the decline of their Society. Here is a curious dragon’s tooth, and it is difficult to see how it was manufactured. Suffice it to say that, in extensive historical and genealogical researches for the purposes of this history (and in researches by the authors of the Rogers and the Bolles Genealogies, both of which works largely include allied families), there has been found but one instance of suicide among the Rogerenes, and this was that of a young man who took his own life while under the influence of melancholia which came upon him during a period of religious revival. This young man was not of Rogers descent. There was, however, in New London, at a somewhat later date, a young man of Rogers and Rogerene descent, who became hopelessly insane. Because of the devotion of his mother to a church in New London he was brought up in that church. It is said that he was a very bright and promising youth, and that no cause could be assigned to his derangement other than excitement induced by a revival in that church. This is mentioned to show that such instances are not confined to any denomination. Backus also says that “as late as 1763” some Rogerenes “clapped shingles and pieces of wood together around the meeting-house” in Norwich. Since he gives no authority for this statement, it is likely to be one of the many fabrications imposed upon the public as “history.” If any such thing occurred, it was doubtless a Rogerene warning to that church to desist certain meddling or persecutions. It will not only be remembered that the date given is during the height of the persecution that induced the great countermove, but that from the Norwich church had issued those who apprehended and scourged the party of Rogerenes on their way to Lebanon.[188] Mr. Backus, with the real or assumed lack of perception common to ecclesiastical historians when treating upon the Rogerenes, adds that “the rulers having learned so much wisdom as only to remove these people from disturbing others, without fines or corporeal punishment,” they had ceased from such things in a great measure. It would have been contrary to the inclination of such writers to perceive that the Rogerenes disturbed no one but in defense of the truth for which they stood, and that when persecution on account of their own religion ceased, they had no further need to disturb the religious observances of others. Footnote 188: J. Backus, the justice who apprehended and scourged the Lebanon party in 1725, appears to have been grandfather of the historian of the Baptists.