Benjamin Fox Rogers was the son of Zebulon and Sally Fox Rogers, and was born at Waterford, Conn., October 9, 1828. He was the youngest of seven children, there being in his father's family four half brothers, one half-sister and one own sister. These all passed to the spirit land before him. At the age of eleven he was deprived, by death, of a father's care and guidance, but as he himself has borne witness, the mother proved herself competent to the work of caring for and directing the family. When about twelve years of age, in a series of revival meetings held with old "Seaside Church" at Waterford and conducted by Eld. Alexander Campbell, he gave his heart to Christ and was baptized into the fellowship of the Seventh Day Baptist Church of Waterford, Conn., by Eld. Lester T. Rogers.
His father and older brothers were seamen and owners of vessels. Their home was near the shore of the eastern end of Long Island Sound, and Benjamin like most boys of his age of that place at that time, commenced as soon as he was old enough, to follow the sea as an occupation. For about ten years he found this his business summers and sometimes winters also. His father owned a small farm and from here he attended school winters when not at sea, and in this way commenced his education.
In 1847, when nineteen years of age, he with his sister Aurelia, who afterwards became Mrs. Joseph Boss, and several young people from Waterford, went to DeRuyter, N. Y., to attend DeRuyter Institute. Benjamin's mother accompanied the young people to look after the whole group and to keep house for them. Here he spent about two years and made such progress that he was able twenty years later to graduate from college in three years. After the two years in DeRuyter Institute his attention was turned to pursuits other than education for nearly a score of years. In 1852 he was married to Miss Lucilla H. Maxson, daughter of John and Mary Star Maxson of DeRuyter, but the death of Mrs. Rogers two years later severed this happy union. Mr. Rogers, a few months after the death of Mrs. Rogers, turned his eyes to life in the promising West. In the summer of 1855 he with his mother and brother Thomas moved to Wisconsin and in the following winter he and his brother purchased a farm in Milton, Wis.
He was now a young man twenty-seven years of age, and from the first he entered into the social, business, political, and religious life of the community with spirit and wisdom. The first autumn he was there he took the stump for John C. Fremont, candidate for President on the Republican ticket. This he did at the suggestion of his townsmen, and as he said, in lieu of the fact that he could not vote, not having been in the State long enough to become a legal voter. The prominent issue was slavery and its extension, and he stumped Milton and the surrounding towns in the interest of his party. The spirit and the ability with which he did this work caused his brethren to mark him as one who should be called to the gospel ministry, though the call was not made till some years later. Thus for nine years he gave himself to the farm and community. In the autumn of 1864 he was urged to allow his name to come before the convention for membership for the Wisconsin Legislature, but he was defeated in the convention, and because, as one of the leaders of the party said, it had been reported that he had said he would vote for a certain Democrat of the town rather than for a certain Republican if occasion seemed to demand it. This seems to have been the turning point in his life and saved him for the ministry. At the time of the convention which turned him down, the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference was in session at Milton. During the Convention a letter was received from New Auburn, Minn., where a Seventh Day Baptist settlement had been founded, asking that he be sent there to organize a church and become its pastor. The first intimation he had of what was contemplated was when Eld. A. H. Lewis came to him and said such a call had been made by the New Auburn people, that the Rock River Church would ask at the hands of the Conference his ordination and that they were going to Rock River, lay their hands on him and send him to Minnesota. This call presented a problem not easy to solve. He was now thirty-six years of age; he had seven years previous to this married Adelia M. Stillman of Milton, and his family interests as well as his farming interests were all here. But the call appealed to him as one from God and he accepted. Following the Conference the ordination took place as had been planned. Eld. Joshua Clarke was chairman of the council, Dea. Lester T. Rogers, secretary, and Pres. Jonathan Allen, leader in the examination. Of the ordination Elder Rogers years afterward wrote: "It can be better imagined than told with what feelings I entered upon that examination, and about the only thing I hold in distinct memory about it is that when President Allen had asked some question in reference to the nature and office of the Holy Spirit, the answer being given, the president replied in that deep gruff voice peculiar to him and which but few could imitate, 'Pantheism, pure pantheism.' The only real satisfaction I could get was that I had been able for once to give what seemed to be a satisfactory definition of what pantheism really was. I always thought that I was accepted for ordination for knowledge of what pantheism was and for knowledge of what the Holy Spirit was not." As had been planned, in the early winter following his ordination, he went in the employ of the Seventh Day Baptist Missionary Board and the Missionary Board of the Northwestern Association, to New Auburn, and organized what is now the New Auburn Church.
This church he served as missionary pastor for two years. In the fall of 1866, feeling the necessity of a better preparation for the preaching of the Gospel, he resigned his pastorate, came to Alfred, entered the University, and graduated in the classical course in 1869. We can imagine what it must have meant to a man nearly forty years of age, who had been out of school seventeen years and who had given his attention to business, farming, and politics for nearly a score of years, to enter college and complete a classical course. The fact that he did this showed his grasp of what was needed and his strength to follow the course he believed the times demanded; the fact that he credibly completed the course showed both that he was naturally a scholar and that he had the grace and grit to quietly, modestly, and firmly hold himself to that which he had undertaken. Soon after entering college he was invited to supply the Hartsville Seventh Day Baptist Church, which he did till the following spring. At this time the pastorate of the Second Seventh Day Baptist Church of Alfred was made vacant by the resignation of Eld. Nathan Wardner. Elder Rogers was then called to this pastorate and served therein till he finished his college course.
Desiring for special reasons to return to the West, he accepted after his graduation, a call to the Seventh Day Baptist Church of Utica, Wis. Two years later a theological class was organized in Alfred University and he resigned his charge at Utica, came back to Alfred, entered the first theological class regularly formed in the University, and graduated with the same in 1874. In this class, besides Elder Rogers, there were Revs. Geo. J. Crandall, Darius K. Davis, David H. Davis, Theo. L. Gardiner, John L. Hoffman, Oliver D. Sherman, and Horace Stillman, of whom D. K. Davis, D. H. Davis, and T. L. Gardiner alone remain.
During the three years he was in the University studying theology, he was pastor of the Seventh Day Baptist Church of Friendship, located at Nile, N. Y. Immediately upon his graduation from the theological department he received an invitation from the First Seventh Day Baptist Church of Hopkinton, R. I., to supply its pulpit during the absence of Pastor A. E. Main, who was on a trip to Europe. Following this he served one and one-half years as missionary pastor on the Hebron field in Pennsylvania. It was here that the writer, then a small boy, came to know him. My father's house was his headquarters a considerable portion of this time, or when he was on that part of the field. We all loved Elder Rogers; we loved him for his manly and unostentatious ways, for his kindly friendship, and for his clear-cut, logically arranged, and forceful preaching. Nearly forty years have passed, yet I remember some of the sermons of those days. In 1873 he became pastor of the Seventh Day Baptist Church of Berlin, N. Y. This church he served sixteen years. During this time the church celebrated its one hundredth anniversary and Elder Rogers, with his other duties, prepared and published a history of the church, which is a valuable contribution to the historical literature of the denomination.
It was here that his second wife died after a married life of about thirty years. To them, January 29, 1862, had been born one child, a son, Willis Elmer Rogers, who died in Milton after a brief life of about two and one-half years. In 1889 he was married to Miss Arletta E. Green of Berlin, who for nearly twenty-five years has been his faithful helpmeet and devoted wife, and who today is left in loneliness and sorrow, and yet not without the brightest hopes of being reunited some glad day. After sixteen years of faithful service in the Berlin Church, he became, in December 1891, pastor of the Seventh Day Baptist Church of Scott, N. Y. He speaks of this as a pleasant pastorate. When nine years as pastor of this church had passed , being now about threescore and ten, he resigned, withdrew from the active duties of the ministry, and moved to Alfred to spend the sunset of life. But he was still active - active and unselfish in his interests, active and unselfish in his work. He has taken a deep interest in all the works of the town and has been a wise and loving counselor and help to the pastors. As a member of the church, he has borne its interests in his heart; as a member of the church Advisory Committee, he has been faithful in attending its meetings and wise and positive in his counsels. He was in his place in the prayer meeting unless sick, and has been most efficient and highly appreciated as a Bible-school teacher. So well has he retained his youthful vigor and activity that it did not seem to us that he was upward of fourscore years. We knew that he was fast ripening for the summer-land of the soul; some of his most intimate friends knew that he was not quite so well this spring, but he slipped away from us so quietly and so silently that we can hardly realize that he is gone. Only a week before his death he was at work in his garden, but the taper of physical life gradually grew dim and he passed to the life beyond, Tuesday morning, May 27.
Paul's words when facing his own death, as recorded in 2 Timothy iv, 7 and 8, are true of Elder Rogers: "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all who love his appearing."
"I have fought a good fight," and how true this statement id of Elder Rogers! Good because it was fought with unselfish aims; good because it was fought with self-sacrifice, and no life without that can make a good fight, no matter what it may do; good because its aim had been to help others to the best in life and the best in eternity; good because it had been fought in a manly, loving and Christly way; good because of want he has, through the Holy Spirit, accomplished. He has left no statistical data as the results of his work, he was too modest, too humble, too much a Christian for that, but only eternity can tell what such a life and work as his has accomplished. Statistics, even if available, would be barren.
"I have finished my course," and what a course it has been: ten years as a seaman, though a mere youth he was, two years a student, fifteen years a farmer, business man and political leader, six years more a student in college and seminary, seventy-three years a follower of Christ, and fifty years a minister of the Gospel, conscientious, wise, faithful and loving, and loved by all his people. What is grander and more noble than such a life and such a ministry?
"I have kept the faith." Yes, indeed, through all these years he stood true, true to the faith of his fathers, to the faith for which the Rogerses, his Seventh Day Baptist ancestors, suffered persecution, even imprisonment on Connecticut soil more than two hundred years ago. So far as known he never wavered. Though conservative, yet he was liberal; for a man may be conservative and at the same time broad-minded, just as he may hold to new ideas and be narrow. Elder Rogers was conservative and yet had breadth and liberality of view. No one ever doubted where he stood, and all respected his beliefs and convictions, because it was always apparent that his one desire was to help his fellow man.
"Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all who love his appearing." His death was not defeat. Had he lived a selfish life, it would have been defeat, no matter what his pretensions and professions were; but his was not selfish and his death was a crowning. We may think of him now as with President Allen, and Doctors Williams and Maxson, his teachers; with Huffman and Crandall and Sherman and Stillman, his classmates; with many of that large company whom he has helped and to whom he has ministered during these fifty years. We have met with loss, but he with gain; we are fettered, but he is set at liberty. We must continue a while the tasks of life; but if faithful to those tasks, our day of crowning will surely come.
Farewell services were held in the church, Thursday afternoon, May 29. Pres. B. C. Davis, Dean A. E. Main, Dean A. B. Kenyon, and Professors W. C. Whitford, E. P. Saunders, and W. L. Greene acted as bearers. The pastor was assisted in the service by President Davis, Dean Main, and Eld. I. L. Cottrell, pastor of the Second Alfred Church. Interment took place in the Alfred Rural Cemetery. William L. Burdick
