Ball saw his own house (the parsonage), his church, and the entire village reduced to ashes by the British troops; but he lived to see anew house of worship built on a more commanding spot, and no doubt on a larger scale; so that the latter house exceeded the former in its external proportions, if not in the internal manifestations of the spirit of God. We have reason to believe that the records of the church kept in the parsonage were destroyed with it, as we have no records of the church preserved until after peace was declared.

The elders of the church when the second house of worship was built, were Ebenezer Miller, Jacob Smith, Moses St. John, and soon after were added Eli Tyler, Justus Harris, Peter Fleming, Stephen Benedict and Joseph Owen.

Rev. Samuel Mills, who was nominally the pastor of the church, though not present continually from 1769 to 1786, was the son of Rev. Zedediah Mills, of Ripton. He was graduated at Yale College in 1765. In 1782 he was preaching at Patterson (then Fredericksburg), and there he

HISTORY OF THE COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER.

continued till 1789, when he joined the Anabaptists and was dismissed from connection with the Presbytery. He died in 1815.

In 1783, Capt. Lewis M. Donald gave to the Presbyterian Society the land on which the second house of worship was built. Here is the deed of gift as recorded in the town records:

DEED OF GIFT FOR SITE OF SECOND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.