Although it would take more than a century after the British takeover of New Netherland in 1664 for the English language to replace Dutch in Albany, this process was accelerated by the presence of British troops in and around Albany during the French-and-Indian War (1754-1763). Westerlo's switch from Dutch to English in his "Memoirs" in 1782 and the addition of English as a language in which he preached laid his conflicting feelings about the use of Dutch bare: he did not want to disappoint the elderly members of his congregation, while at the same time realizing that hanging on to Dutch would lead to the loss of the non-Dutch-speaking part of the population for the Dutch Reformed Church in Albany.