The trial occurred the first fortnight of August. Prendergast was assisted in his defense by his wife, who made a strong impression on the jury, proving that her husband, before the acts of which he was accused, was "esteemed a sober, honest and industrious farmer, much beloved by his neighbors, but stirred up to act as he did by one Munro, who is absconded." So ardent was this woman advocate that the State's attorney forgot himself and moved that she be excluded from the court room. The motion was denied, and the mover of it emphatically rebuked. But there was not lacking proof of the fact of treason, and Prendergast was convicted and sentenced to be hanged in six weeks. Then this valiant woman's energy and perseverance rose to their highest. She set off for an audience with the Governor, Sir Henry Moore, Bart., and returned about the first of September with a reprieve. Just in time she arrived, for a company of fifty mounted men had ridden the whole length of the county to rescue her husband from the jail. She convinced them of the folly of such action as they proposed, and sent them home, while she turned to the task of obtaining a pardon from the King. Here, too, she was successful; for, six months later, George III, who required six years to be subdued by a Washington, released her husband. They arrived home amid great popular rejoicings. William Prendergast and Mehitabel Wing, whose descendants settled later about Chautauqua Lake, New York, were bound to the Quaker Community by ties of marriage and of trade. William was not, so far as I can learn, a member of the Meeting; but Mehitabel was a daughter of Jedidiah Wing, whose family was devoted to the Society from 1744 until the "laying down" of the Meeting in 1885. William Prendergast was, however, a member of the community. His name heads an account in the ledgers of the Merritt store, in 1771 and 1772, and his purchases indicate that he was a substantial farmer whose trading center was Quaker Hill.[22] Prendergast was an Irishman. Before the Revolution he with his family and possessions, a caravan of seventeen vehicles and thirty horses, emigrated westward, going as far south as Kentucky, then north through Ohio and New York. A part of the family company proceeded to Canada. His son James settled, with other Prendergasts, on Chautauqua Lake, and became the founder of Jamestown, where his family, now extinct there, has given the city a library. When William Prendergast and Mehitabel Wing, his resolute wife, died, is not known. None of that name is later found on or near Quaker Hill.