Soon after 1685, this area was settled as part of what is now neighboring Danbury. As population grew, residents petitioned the General Assembly of the Colony for parish status and for a church closer than the center of Danbury. In 1759 the request was granted, though the Assembly named the new parish Bethel rather than the petitioned Eastbury. The meeting house for the seventy-one members of the new Bethel Society stood on Main Street at the site of the present Congregational Church, and parish taxes were collected. By 1769 there were at least five schools within the Stony Hill, Plumtrees, Wolfpits, Wildcat, Center, and Grassy Plain settlements. In April 1777, British troops under General Tryon passed through Bethel on their way to burn patriot stores in Danbury, and they also burned nineteen houses and a church. Militiamen under Generals Wooster, Arnold, and Silliman pursued them, with many spending a rainy night in Bethel. The parish finally gained town status in 1855. The Seelye homestead, built in 1842 and now occupied by the Bethel Library and the Historical Society, was home to two Seelyes who became college presidents, at Amherst and at Smith. Bethel was also the birthplace of P.T. Barnum, the famous showman.