The church on Broadway was destroyed by fire in 1776, and was never
rebuilt. The congregation worshipped for a time in the Scotch
Presbyterian Church on Cedar Street.

The American Revolution broke out. On political questions our ancestors
differed almost as widely as do their successors on synodical questions.
Some of them were for George the Third, others were for George
Washington. In this respect, however, they were not unlike other
inhabitants of New York.

Frederick Muehlenberg, the pastor of the Swamp Church, was an ardent
patriot. At the beginning of the war, as we have seen, he fled to
Pennsylvania.

During the war the services were conducted by the chaplains of the
Hessian troops. The Hessians were good church-goers and also generous
contributors, so that the financial condition of the congregation at
this time was greatly improved.

Houseal, the pastor of Trinity Church, was a tory, and when in 1783 the
American troops marched into New York, he with a goodly number of his
adherents removed to Nova Scotia and founded a Lutheran church in
Halifax.

Both churches were now without pastors. Tribulation must have softened
the spirits of the two contending congregations, for when Dr. Johann
Christoph Kunze came to this city from Philadelphia in 1784, he became
pastor of the reunited congregations, worshipping in the Swamp Church.

[illustration: "Frederick Augustus Conrad Muehlenberg; Pastor of the Old