In 1775, at the "Lexington alarm," he marched as a minuteman, under Capt. Wright, for Cambridge, and after being there a few weeks obtained a furlough and went to visit among his relatives at Sutton and Oxford. His friends would hear him explain his new doctrine; and therefore from house to house in Sutton, Oxford, Charlton, Thompson and Douglas, he opened and expounded his theories, until on his return to the camp, he says, "the brethren numbered forty or fifty." On his return to Warwick he renewed his labors with increased zeal. There his ordination as a minister occurred in 1781. After having remained in Warwick about thirty years, he removed to Shoreham, Vt, and later to New Haven, Vt, in which place and vicinity he continued to preach, as his health permitted. He was familiar with the scriptures, delighted in arguments of doctrine subjects, and was more than an ordinary man as a thinker, but as a preacher he did not excel. Rev. W. S. Balch, from whose sketch of him these notes are in part compiled, says: "He was the real founder of American Universalism." (now known as the Universalist Church)