According to Commentary: The History of Shrub Oak, by Lawrence Constant:

After the Revolution, by 1789, there was built in the village a Methodist Church – one of the first in the county – upon land owned by Pierre Van Cortlandt, Jr., whose father, Pierre, Sr., had been a Congressman, Lieutenant-Governor of New York, president of the convention which established the Constitution, and a personal friend of George Washington. (Pierre Jr., in his own right studied law under Alexander Hamilton; served as a Congressman; and was a higher general of the local militia, with James Fenimore Cooper, author of “The Last of the Mohicans”, serving as his aide). This first Methodist meeting house in Shrub Oak stood about where the large Denver-Hallock monument is, in the southeastern portion of the Old Shrub Oak Cemetery. Several circuit-riding ministers preached in it, the most famous of which was the celebrated Reverend Francis Asbury 91745-1816), the man responsible for the flourishing of the Methodist faith in America. Asbury, who preached in Shrub Oak on more than one occasion, was a welcome visitor in the homes of such notables as Meriweather Lewis, John C. Calhoun, and Washington.
…
In 1867, work was begun on the present Methodist house of worship, an ivy-clad Gothic edifice, built of stone drawn from Piano Mountain and a quarry on Stony Street. At the ceremony of the laying of the cornerstone, held on June 29 of that year, an address was made by the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887). He was the brother of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe (authoress of Uncle Tom’s Cabin), and had served as Abraham Lincoln’s orator during the recent Civil War.