One of the sergeants coming out was asked by a bystander what the minister had said, he replied : " that he declared God Almighty was a man of war." The interrogator observed, "he should like to ask him how many guns He carried." Some of the most active members of the parish having joined the army at the commencement of the Revolution, and the Rector lost at sea, the church and lot were sold -- so it is said, to satisfy the claims of the contractor, Benjamin Chapman ; and it is also asserted that this individual subsequently purchased both, of the trustees, and converted the former into a tavern.6 For many years after the war it was known as the ''Church Tavern," a name given on purpose to cast odium upon the Church. By Chapman it was mortgaged to the Presbyterian Society of South Salem ; default being made in payment, it was advertised for sale. A few days before the sale was to take place, it was conveyed by Chapman to John L. Morehouse, from whom it passed to Jeremiah Keeler in 1796 ; the latter dismantled the building and removed the material, much of which was embodied in the Keeler mansion now standings The whole transaction, beginning with the attempt of the Rev. Solomon Mead to stop the erection of the building in its incipient stages in 1771, looks very much like a wicked design of a narrow-minded political and religious clique to demolish the Church here that it might never rise again.