building, and as soon as it was off the ground the purchaser of the lot began to build a dwelling-house on the site.  It was slow work pushing the church along the street, and before they got far somebody discovered that the title of the new site was not good, and so the bargain was annulled.  The next day the brethren went plunging around town trying to buy another site, but nobody had one to sell; and on the following morning the supervisors got an order from the court requiring that meeting-house to be removed from the public street within twenty-four hours.

The brethren were nearly wild about it, and they begged old Brindley to let them run the concern in on his vacant lot temporarily until they could look around.  But Brindley belonged to another denomination, and he said he felt that it would be wrong for him to do anything to help a church that believed false doctrines.  Then they ran the meeting-house out on the turnpike beyond the town, whereupon the turnpike company notified them that its charges would be eight dollars a day for toll.  So they hauled it back again; and while going down the hill it broke loose, plunged through the fence of Dr. Mackey’s garden and brought up on top of his asparagus-bed.  He is an Episcopalian, and he sued the meeting for damages; and the sheriff levied upon the meetinghouse.  The brethren paid the bill and dragged the building out again.

They wanted to put it in the court-house yard, but Judge Twiddler, who is a Presbyterian, said that after examining the statutes carefully he could find no law allowing a Methodist meeting-house to be located in that place.  In despair, the brethren ran the building down to the river-shore and fitted it on a huge raft of logs, concluding to tie it to the wharf until they could buy a lot.  But as the owner of the wharf handed them on the third day a bill of twenty-five dollars for wharfage, they took the building out and anchored it in the stream.  That night a tug-boat, coming up the river in the dark, ran halfway through the Sunday-school room, and a Dutch brig, coming into collision with it, was drawn out with the pulpit and three of the front pews dangling from the bowsprit.  The owners of both vessels sued for damages, and the United States authorities talked of confiscating the meeting-house as an obstruction to navigation.  But a few days afterward the ice-gorge sent a flood down the river and broke the building loose from its anchor.  It was subsequently washed ashore on Keyser’s farm; and he said he was willing to let it stay there at four dollars a day rent until he was ready to plough for corn.  As the cost of removing it would have been very great, the trustees ultimately sold it to Keyser for a barn, and then, securing a good lot, they built a handsome edifice of stone.