THE TOWN OF BEDFORD. 5 1 



a division and difficulty in the church, and was finally dismissed Dec. 

 21st, 1758. He died in Balston in 1797. After one year's vacancy, 

 Dec. 13th, 1769, the Rev. Samuel Mills was installed pastor of Bedford 

 Church, and remained until May 18th, 1786, when the Presbytery of 

 Dutchess County met and dissolved the relation between him and the 

 church, and the same day installed the Rev. John Davenport as pastor 

 of the Church. But Mr. Mills, though nominally pastor of the church 

 from 1769 to 1786, was absent from the charge for several years — having 

 been driven from Bedford by the distressing circumstances attending the 

 war. In the meantime, their former pastor, Rev. Eliphalet Ball returned 

 and assumed the supply and charge of the church, and remained in this 

 connection till 1784 when he was dismissed. Mr. Ball having spent four 

 years at Amity, in Woodbridge, Conn., removed to Saratoga County 

 New York, 1788, taking with him a part of his Bedford congregation. 

 The settlement for a long time was called Ball Town, now Ballston. 



Mr. Ball was the stated supply of this church in the stormy times of 

 the American Revolution, when the people were struggling for their in- 

 dependence. When the old church, built in 1680, was burned to the 

 ground, having stood an hundred years, and having proved amiable to 

 the hearts of the people of God for a century, they stood silently by 

 and saw it reduced to ashes by the British army under Lieut. Col. Tarle- 

 ton. An old veteran still lingering among us, almost ninety years old, 

 remembers having heard her mother say she saw the smoke of the old 

 church rising to heaven, as sweet and holy incense, as the timbers 

 yielded to the devouring element, though living a mile and a half distant. 

 Mr. 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 Bene- 

 dict 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 



