Proprietors from Hartford whose names appeared on the tax lists of 1720 originally received the western land grants called Hart(ford)land, now the Town of Hartland. The first permanent settler in the area was Thomas Giddings, who came from Lyme on June 12, 1754. The town was incorporated in 1761 and its population grew rapidly; only a few years later, 359 troops were raised for Revolutionary War service in the Continental Army. Streams on the East and West Mountains provided water power, and the Hollow was fertile bottom land. By 1800 the population had reached 1,318, much of the land had been cleared, and saw mills, grist mills, tanneries, and shops were operating. In 1836 John Ward and Sons began a calico mill and print works, the largest industry ever operated within Hartland. Settlers were drawn onward to the Western Lands, and many families left for Ohio, where the hard work shown by Hartland's many stone walls would be better rewarded in deep black soils. Titus Hayes and a group of friends made the First Exodus in 1811. Near starvation in 1816, the Year With No Summer, with killing frost in every month, inspired another exodus. Only in recent years has the population returned to its late 18th century level. The abandoned farms soon grew to brush and sprout, and blueberries became an important part of the cash crop of local farmers into the 1940's. In the 1930's many farms were bought by the State of Connecticut or agents of the Metropolitan District Commission, which together own about three-fourths of the town today. Again forested, with its fertile low land beneath the waters of the Barkhamsted Reservoir, Hartland typifies early rural New England.