With the growing trade of the city, the business of hat-making kept steady pace. The prosperity of the South, and the constant development of the West, provided Baltimore with a wide outlet for her products. Through the business channels of this young and enterprising city flowed a large proportion of the products of the mills and factories of New England, assisting materially the business activity of the place, and it is quite likely that the interests of Baltimore and New England at that time being so connected is an explanation why so many New England people migrated to Baltimore in those days of her prosperity.
With characteristic energy and enterprise, Mr. Rogers extended his business, pushing forward into new fields as the settlement of the country advanced. Besides a large trade with the entire South, the wagon-trains, which were the expresses of those days, distributed his goods throughout the States of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee, thus securing to him at that time the most extensive business in hat manufacture conducted by any one firm in the United States.
Fortune favored Mr. Rogers, and during his whole business career there was no interruption in the progress of this industry in Baltimore. Not until his death, or after the middle of the century, was there any noticeable decline.
The eventful business career and commendable private life of Mr. Rogers ended on the 10th of April, 1842, he falling suddenly in the old Light-street Methodist Church while attending divine service. The Baltimore Sun of April 11, 1842, mentioned his death as follows:
"The illness of Jacob Rogers, Esq., occurred in Light-street Church; he fell in a faint from which he died an hour after at his residence, No. 9 South street. He was well known and respected as one of the most worthy, industrious, and valuable of our citizens of Baltimore."
WESTERN EXPRESS, 1825.