Editing North Stonington, Connecticut (section)

===Mills and incorporation: Late 18th century to mid-19th century===
{{unreferenced section|date= May 2022}}
As early as the first part of the 18th century first- and second-generation farmers in North Stonington began harnessing the power of the town's rivers and streams to establish [[grist mill]]s and [[sawmill]]s.  For example, Samuel Richardson, one of the first settlers in what is now the village, already had a mill in use along the [[Shunock River]] by 1702.  However, it was only in the 1790s, after the United States had gained its independence, that mills began to emerge throughout the town in a serious way.  The primary reason for this was that the town's farmers were no longer focused on clearing land and subsistence cultivation, and were now producing ever-larger crop and livestock yields that could be exported to markets, either in Connecticut or as far away as in [[Boston]] and the [[West Indies]].  Second, during this period the country was emerging into a period of economic prosperity after the deprivations and uncertainty of the war years.

Mills during the late 18th century quickly began to proliferate in the village along the Shunock River to such an extent that the locale took the name of "Milltown", and the Avery family and other landowners began to sell lots along what is now the western end of Main Street to house businesses and dwellings for workers in the mills.  Smaller communities, with their own churches, post offices, mills, and stores, emerged in Burch's Falls (renamed Clark's Falls in the 1860s) and Laurel Glen, both in the eastern end of town, and Ashwillet and Pendleton Hill (known as Pauchunganuc until the 1840s), located respectively in the northwestern and northeastern corners of the town.  Individual mills also emerged throughout the town to meet the grain and lumber milling needs of local communities at a distance from the five towns within the town.

By the early part of the 19th century North Stonington's residents began to regard themselves as possessing a character separate from the communities of the southern part of the town to which they were still connected.  The communities of [[Mystic, Connecticut|Mystic]], [[Stonington (borough), Connecticut|Stonington Borough]], and [[Pawcatuck, Connecticut|Pawcatuck]] were far away—by the standards of the pre-automobile era—and, being of a seafaring nature, the "southerners" possessed significantly different needs and interests.  Efforts by the southern communities from the late 18th century to build a number of relatively expensive construction projects along the coastline, such as a new road from Stonington Borough to Mystic and a bridge over Lambert's Cove, at first led residents of the northern end of the town to oppose budgeting monies for these projects, and eventually caused the northerners to secede and form their own town.  At a town hall meeting at Stonington's Road Church in April 1807, a small majority of voters decided for division, using the old dividing line between the North and South societies of the Congregationalist Church as the demarcation line.  The new town then sent a request for the State Assembly to approve the measure.

The Assembly, which met the following month, approved the new town's independence, but did not endorse the town's proposed new name of Jefferson, and instead directed that the town would be named "North Stonington", citing as justification that for almost a century the northern part of Stonington had been known by that name.  While the Assembly's reasoning is superficially logical, its rejection of the name "Jefferson" almost certainly was motivated by the considerable antagonism held by dominant [[Federalist Party|Federalist]] politicians in [[Hartford, Connecticut|Hartford]], who led [[New England]] in their opposition to [[Thomas Jefferson|President Jefferson]] and his policies.  We do not know the reason why the country's third president—then midway through his second term—was so popular among North Stonington residents, although perhaps Jefferson's public criticism of the Congregational Church's domination of politics and religion in Connecticut earned him the loyalty of the local Baptist community, which perhaps regarded him as a champion of their rights in a state that still enshrined preferential rights to the Congregational Church.

An inventory of the town's taxable assets in the following year, 1808, provides a snapshot of the town's economic profile.  The town was still predominantly devoted to agriculture.  53 percent of the town's area was given over to cultivation or pasture, the remainder being taken up by wooded land, much of it in rocky outcrops or in swamps.  The town's roughly 2,500 residents lived in about 750 dwellings and possessed about 445 mature oxen and bulls, 1,354 cattle, and 388 horses.  There were 3,335 sheep, a reflection of the prodigious [[wool]] business in the town as a result of trade barriers erected by the United States against British textile imports that spurred considerable domestic demand for woolen products.

At the same time, this same inventory shows the growing affluence in the town, a reflection of the town's agricultural wealth and growing mill activity.  Five stores—including one with two floors—had sprung up.  Two eminent citizens owned [[chaise]]s:  Revolutionary War veteran Elias Sanford Palmer of Pauchunganuc Hill, and Thomas Prentice, who lived in the northwest part of town.  Shopkeepers Daniel and Saxton Miner in Milltown owned the sole other vehicle mentioned, a "carriage on springs".  Nine leading citizens, including Elias Sanford Palmer and Thomas Prentice, also possessed another status symbol: clocks with "steel and brass parts". Serving not just the thirst of the townspeople but also of the many millworkers were nine taverns, five of which were connected with stores.

North Stonington and its older sister Stonington played an enthusiastic role in the [[War of 1812]], even if the war itself was deeply unpopular in Connecticut and elsewhere in New England.  During the war North Stonington resident Lieutenant Colonel William Randall, the great-grandson of original settler John Randall, commanded the 30th regiment of Connecticut militia, which was mobilized twice. The first time was in June 1813, when Randall's regiment—which consisted of about 300 men, equally from Stonington and North Stonington—force-marched overnight in driving rain to [[Groton, Connecticut|Groton]] to help defend the city against a feared landing by British naval forces. The 30th Regiment returned to the colors again in August 1814, when a squadron of British warships bombarded Stonington Borough in preparation for a raid on the town. It was during this battle that Lantern Hill obtained the nickname "Tar Barrel Hill", because, in anticipation of an attack on Stonington, soldiers had moved [[pitch (resin)|pitch]] in barrels to its summit to set them alight to serve as an alarm if British forces appeared in the [[Long Island Sound|Sound]].  The flames and smoke from this hill alerted Randall and his men to react and move quickly to Stonington Point to repulse the attempted raiding party that intended to put Stonington Borough to the torch.

The 1820s and 1830s saw continued growth of Milltown as a commercial center, to include the building of two [[fulling]] mills to process the town's prodigious wool production, as well as a [[Tanning (leather)|tannery]], an iron works, cabinetmaking shops, and multiple grain mills and stores to serve the large factory workforce.  The town's overall population rose from 2,500 shortly after incorporation to over 2,800 by the 1830s, and commercial activity during this period was facilitated by the opening in 1820 of the New London-Providence Turnpike, which today is known as [[Connecticut Route 184|Route 184]].

It was also during this period that the Wheeler family accumulated much of its mercantile wealth through its stores and trading connections. Maj. Dudley Wheeler (1796–1888) was the most prominent member of the family at this time; in addition to owning two stores in town, he also was extensively involved in the wool export business and during mid-century worked out of an import-export office in [[New York City]].  Over the next century, the Wheelers left their mark on the town through a number of legacies including providing large donations to the Congregational Church and the school system.  Wheeler's son Dwight donated one of the family's stores to become the town hall in 1904 (today this building is the Old Town Hall).  Unfortunately, the impressive Wheeler home located across the street from the town hall was destroyed by fire in 1938 and never rebuilt; today the location is occupied by a parking lot.

Another leading businessman during this period was Stephen A. Main (1805–86) who like Dudley Wheeler established himself as a local businessman and mill owner before moving to New York City to work in various commercial enterprises.  After the Civil War Main returned to North Stonington and bought one of Dudley Wheeler's stores in Milltown; Main's home today houses the North Stonington Historical Society.  The commercial boom in the town was by no means limited to just a few families, and permitted the construction of many ornate homes in Milltown and elsewhere, many of which have survived to this day.

Almost as soon as the town established itself as a commercial center larger, even, than [[Westerly, Rhode Island|Westerly]], however, it was quickly bypassed by the effects of the [[Industrial Revolution]], which favored larger towns astride similarly larger rivers to erect huge mills.  North Stonington's population plummeted from the late 1830s as people left to work in Westerly and Norwich.  By 1840 the town's population had dropped to 2,269, and by 1870 it was down to 1,759.  Adding to North Stonington's decline in population was that an increasing number of the town's youth were joining the wave of migrants heading west to try their fortunes on the frontier.  Adventuresome townspeople had been attempting this before the Revolution—an early attempt to settle the then-wild [[Wyoming Valley]] in [[Pennsylvania]] in the 1760s ended in disaster—but in the 1790s small groups began leaving to help settle new towns in [[upstate New York]] and, later, [[Ohio]].  Out-migration through the late 19th and early 20th centuries ensured that the town's population would remain on a gradual, downward slope, despite the fact that the families still tended to be large.