One man was shot down in the action at Mr. Allen's side; and in after years when asked if he had killed a man at Bennington, Mr. Allen replied that he did not know, but that observing a flash often repeated from a certain bush, and that it was generally followed by the fall of one of Stark's men, he fired that way, and put the flash out. Mr. Allen loaned all the money he could spare, $2,500, to "the Continent," i.e., to aid the war, even selling his watch to increase the sum.
Though the Revolution as connected with the meeting-house now passes from view, we quote once more from this leader of his people, who being in London twenty-two years after Bennington, saw King George passing in state to the Parliament House. He notes the fact in his diary, and says: "This is he who desolated my country; who ravaged the
American coasts; annihilated our trade; burned our towns; plundered our cities; sent forth his Indian allies to scalp our wives and children; starved our youth in his prison ships; and caused the expenditure of millions of money, and a hundred thousand precious lives. Instead of being the father of his people, he has been their destroyer. May God forgive him so great guilt!"
The Revolution finally achieved, and peace proclaimed, in 1783, people's minds were left free to think of other things than supplying men and means to resist tyranny. But the quickened thought that had evolved the formula, "No taxation without representation,"extended to other fields, and on every hand there began to go up protests against the compulsory support of public worship. Among the newcomers in Pittsfield during the Revolutionary period was one "Dutchman from New York" of a very different type from those that the original proprietors had desired to exclude. He was Mr. Henry Van Schaack, a man of wealth and culture, who had suffered violence and loss by having fallen under the suspicions of the "Sons of Liberty," and had been banished from New York on promising to remain neutral and placing himself under the supervision of the Committee of Inspection. He remained faithful to his promise, and though after the war the act of banishment was revoked, he refused to return, and wrote to his brother: "So perfectly am I satisfied with the manners, customs, and laws of this Commonwealth, that I would not exchange them for any others that I know of in the world." He was an Episcopalian. A Baptist church had been founded, and a society of Shakers had been established previous to 1789, when the thriving town had come to contain a population of two thousand, of whom two hundred belonged to these dissenters from "the standing order."
The little meeting-house that had been built with great efforts and sacrifices was fairly outgrown, and in 1789 the town appointed a committee to procure a plan and report an estimate of cost of a new one. The committee reported what they thought would be the proper dimensions, and said that it was expedient to raise and cover the frame and paint and glaze in one year. This would cost £701 7s. 2d., and would be about two thirds of the entire expense. Nothing was said about the finishing of the interior, for everybody dreaded the inevitable contentions that would accompany the "seating." This house was ninety feet long and fifty-five wide. It was decided to go forward and build, and every person was to be given an opportunity to pay his share of the cost in material. If any one owed the town he was to be allowed to furnish materials — there is no intimation of voluntary contributions; but a thorough scheme of taxation was arranged. There were 411 who should pay a poll tax, and besides taxing a man's property, his "faculty" — i.e., his ability to secure an income — was taxed; and in that a tanner was rated higher than a lawyer or doctor. Non-resident proprietors did not escape, and though prosperous farmers paid from one to four pounds, the majority of assessments are reckoned in shillings. It was the primeval forest that then surrounded the spot where the fair and, for the means of the people, really ambitious structure was to rise; and so, very naturally, we find that Dr. Timothy Childs gave an eighty-foot stick of timber; Stephen Fowler brought the ridgepole; sometimes two or three men united in bringing "a
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