It was not until 1843 that the society "after a long season of declension," on a motion put by Dr. Clark, adopted a resolution of total abstinence. Col. Sidney Berry, ex-judge of Saratoga county, was chosen president and Dr. Clark secretary of the new society. As there exists an apparent contradiction as to the particular roof under which this historic meeting was held, one account stating that it occurred at the Mawney house and another at the neighboring school house, it is proper to say here that this discrepancy is removed by the statement made in Judge Hay's book, page 22, that the session opened in the Mawney house, but that "the society completed its organization" in the school house. In the association, as a coherent institution, coming into existence within the walls of such a building, may be found a prophecy of what the temperance movement in the future was to lay particular stress upon--that is, upon temperance teaching in the public schools. Indeed, it should be said that the Moreau society itself was an educative organization as well as a moral one, having a circulating library and maintaining a lyceum. But, although it had at its head intelligent, high-minded and enterprising men, its career was hard and discouraging to its members. "That little, feeble band of temperance brethren," says Armstrong, "holding their quarterly and annual meetings in a country district school house from April, 1808, onward for several years, without the presence of a single female at their temperance meetings; who were made the song of the drunkard; who were ridiculed by the scoffs of the intemperate world; undisciplined in arms of even moral suasive tactics for warfare, and unable of themselves to encounter the Prince of Hell, with his legions of instrumentalities . . . were, nevertheless, the seed of the great temperance reformation."