Townsend is constant in the performance of his duty in his own parish, and preaches frequently in the parts adjacent." The Rector continued the services of the Church in Lower Salem until the third Sunday after the Declaration of Independence, July 2 1st, 1776, when in the afternoon as he was officiating and had proceeded some length in the service, a company of armed soldiers -- said to have belonged to Col. Sheldon's Regiment, stationed on Keelers hill directly opposite -- marched into the church with drums beating and fifes playing, their guns loaded and bayonets fixed, as if going to battle; and as soon as he commenced reading the collects for the king and royal family, they rose to their feet and the officer commanded him upon the peril of his life to desist. Mr. Townsend immediately stopped reading, closed his prayer book, descended from the reading desk, and so the matter passed over without any accident. From this time the church was closed, so far as Episcopal services were concerned ; and no legal transfer of the property could possibly have taken place until the parish was reorganized, which appears not to have been effected until 18 10.

Mr. Townsend in a letter to the secretary of the society dated Salem, Province of New York, June, 1777, says:

" I continued the services of the Church within my mission for three Sund lys after the Declaration of Independence by the Congress, and should have proceeded still and took the consequences ; but I was informed that all the clergy, in this and the neighboring provinces, had discontinued the public service till it might be performed under the protection of His Majesty, excepting only Mr. Beach of Connecticut, who hath continued his church till very lately. Under these circumstances, I considered