nths.
Meantime the Friends' Meetings were held in the barn at Site 21, then
the residence of Paul Osborn. This barn had been the first Meeting House
erected on the Hill in 1742. It was removed to Site 21 in 1769, when it
was used as a barn till 1884, when it was removed by the present
resident.[27]

There is no mention, even by inference, in the records of Oblong Meeting
that proves this occupation of their building by soldiers. It was not
voluntarily surrendered; other records show that the use of the building
was supported by force; its surrender was grudging, not a matter to be
recorded in the Meeting. It is characteristic of the Friends that they
ignored it.

This toleration of the Hospital was never sympathetic. A letter of great
interest to the student of those times was written to the Governor of
the State of New York, Hon. George Clinton,[28] by Dr. James Fallon,
physician in charge of the sick which were left on Quaker Hill, in the
Meeting House, after the departure of the Continental army. He could get
no one to draw wood for his hospital in the dead of winter, till finally
"old Mr. Russell, an excellent and open Whig, tho' a Quaker," hired him
a wagon and ox team. He could buy no milk without paying in Continental
money, six for one. He declared that "Old Ferris, the Quaker, pulpiteer
of this place, old Russell and his son, old Mr. Chace and his family,
and Thomas Worth and his family, are the only Quakers on or about this
Hill, the public stands indebted to." The two pioneers of the Hill, the
preacher and the builder, were patriots as well. He denounces the rest
as Tories all, the "Meriths," Akins, Wings, Kellys, Samuel Walker, the
schoolmaster, and Samuel Downing, whom he declared a spurious Quaker and
agent of the enemy; also the preacher, Lancaster, "the Widow Irish;"
and many he called "half-Quakers," who were probably more zealous, and
certainly more violent for Quaker and Tory principles than the Quakers
themselves.

The trouble culminated in Dr. Fallon's impressing the wagons of Wing,
Kelly and "the widow Irish," to take fourteen men to Danbury and
Fishkill to save their lives. The former impress was not resisted; but
the soldiers who took the Irish team had to battle with a mob, headed by
Abraham Wing and Benjamin Akin, who used the convalescent soldiers
roughly, but could not prevent the seizure. They were not the first men
to do violence for the sake of the principle of non-resistance. One can