About the year 1737 a society of Rogerine Baptists, or Quaker Baptists, as they were then called, located at Waretown, now in Ocean county. From various notices of the history of this singular sect and how a society came to be located in Ocean county, we extract the following:

This society was founded by John Rogers about 1674; his followers baptised by immersion; the Lord's Supper they administered in the evening with its ancient appendages. They did not believe in the sanctity of the Sabbath. They believed that since the death of Christ all days were holy alike. They used no medicines nor employed doctors or surgeons; would not say grace at meals; all prayers to be said mentally, except when the spirit of prayer compelled the use of voice. They said, "All unscriptural parts of religious worship are idols," and all good Christians should exert themselves against idols, etc. Among the idols they placed the observance of the Sabbath, infant baptism, etc. The Sabbath they called the New England idol, and the methods they took to demolish this idol were as follows: They would on Sundays try to be at some manual labor near meetinghouses or in the way of people going to and from church. They would take work into meetinghouses, the women knitting, the men whittling and making splints for baskets, and every now and then contradicting the preachers. "This was seeking persecution," says one writer, "and they received plenty of it, insomuch that the New Englanders left some of them neither liberty, property or whole skins."

John Rogers, the founder of the sect, who, it is said, was as churlish and contrary to all men as Diogenes, preached over forty years, and died in 1721. The occasion of his death was singular. The smallpox was raging terribly in Boston and spread an alarm to all the country around. Rogers was confident that he could mingle with the diseased and that the strength of his faith would preserve him safe from the mortal contagion. Accordingly he was presumptuous enough to travel one hundred miles to Boston to bring his faith to the test. The result was that he caught the contagion, came home and died with it, the disease also spreading in his family and among his neighbors. This event one would think would have somewhat shaken the faith of his followers, but on the contrary it seemed to increase their zeal.

In 1725 a company of Rogerines were taken up on the Sabbath in Norwich, Conn., while on their way from their place of residence to Lebanon. They were treated with much abuse, and many of them whipped in a most unmerciful manner. This occasioned Gov. Jenks, of Rhode Island, to write spiritedly against their persecutors, and also to condemn the Rogerines for their provoking, disorderly conduct.

One family of the Rogerines was named Colver, or Culver, (Edwards' History spells it one way and Gov. Jenks the other.) This family consisted of John Colver and his wife, who were a part of the company which was treated so rudely at Norwich, and five sons and five daughters, who, with their families, made up the number of twenty-one souls. In the year 1734 this large family removed from New London, Conn., and settled in New Jersey. The first place they pitched upon for a residence was on the east side of Schooley's Mountain, in Morris county. They continued here about three years and then went in a body to Waretown, then in Monmouth, but now in Ocean county. While here they had their meetings in a schoolhouse, and their peculiar manner of conducting services was quite a novelty to other settlers in the vicinity. As in England, during the meeting the women would be engaged in knitting or sewing, and the men in making axe handles, basket splints, or engaged in other work, but we hear of no attempt to disturb other societies.

They continued at Waretown about eleven years, and then went back to Morris county and settled on the west side of the mountain from which they had removed. In 1790 they were reduced to two old persons whose names were Thomas Colver and Sarah Mann; but the posterity of John Colver, it is said, is yet quite numerous in Morris county. Abraham Waeir, from whom the village of Waretown derives its name, tradition says was a member of the Rogerine Society. When the main body of the society left he remained behind, and became quite a prominent business man, generally esteemed. He died in 1768, and his descendants removed to Squan and vicinity, near the head of Barnegat Bay.

Before concluding this notice of the Rogerines, it should be stated that another thing in their creed was, that it was not necessary to have marriages performed by ministers or legal officers. They held that it was not necessary for the man and woman to exchange vows of marriage to make the ceremony binding. A zealous Rogerine once took to himself a wife in this simple manner, and then, to tantalize Governor Saltonstall, called on him to inform him they had married themselves without aid of church or state, and that they intended to live together as husband and wife without their sanction. "What!" said the Governor, in apparent indignation, "do you take this woman for your wife?" "Yes, I most certainly do," replied the man. "And do you take this man for your husband?" said he to the woman. The woman replied in the affirmative. "Then," said the wily old Governor, "in the name of the Commonwealth I pronounce you husband and wife - whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder. Yon are now married according to both law and gospel."

The couple retired, much chagrined at the unexpected way the Governor had turned the tables on them, despite their boasting.