" Accordingly Ann Lee embarked at Liverpool in May, 1774,
eight persons accompanying her, six men and two women, among them her
husband and a brother and niece. They landed in New York in August; and,
after some difficulties and hardships on account of poverty, finally
settled in what appears to have been then a wilderness, "the woods of
Watervliet, near Niskeyuna, about seven miles northwest of Albany." In
the mean time Ann Lee had supported herself by washing and ironing in
New York, and her husband had misconducted himself so grossly toward her
that they finally separated, he going off with another woman.
At Niskeyuna, Ann Lee and her companions busied themselves in clearing
land and providing for their subsistence. They lived in the woods, and
Ann was their leader and preacher. She foretold to them that the time
was near when they should see a large accession to their numbers; but
they had so long to wait that their hearts sometimes failed them. They
settled at Watervliet in September, 1775, and it was not until 1780
that, by a curious chance, their doctrines were at last brought to the
knowledge of persons inclined to receive them.
In the spring of that year there occurred at New Lebanon a religious
revival, chiefly among the Baptists, who had a church in that
neighborhood.
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