The brethren paid the bill and dragged the building out again.
They wanted to put it in the court-house yard, but Judge Twiddler, who is a Presbyterian, said that after examining the statutes carefully he could find no law allowing a Methodist meeting-house to be located in that place.

In despair, the brethren ran the building down to the river-shore and fitted it on a huge raft of logs, concluding to tie it to the wharf until they could buy a lot.

But as the owner of the wharf handed them on the third day a bill of twenty-five dollars for wharfage, they took the building out and anchored it in the stream.
That night a tug-boat, coming up the river in the dark, ran halfway through the Sunday-school room, and a Dutch brig, coming into collision with it, was drawn out with the pulpit and three of the front pews dangling from the bowsprit.

The owners of both vessels sued for damages, and the United States authorities talked of confiscating the meeting-house as an obstruction to navigation.

But a few days afterward the ice-gorge sent a flood down the river and broke the building loose from its anchor.