Originally part of the Nor'field parish of old Fairfield to the south, present Weston was divided into long lots about 1670, beginning its agricultural development, and by 1757 enough families lived there for it to become a separate ecclesiastical society. During the Revolution, British General Tryon's forces passed nearby on their way to and from the burning of Danbury, and Weston mothers fled with their children to the Devil's Den. Near dawn on December 14, 1807, a large meteorite exploded over Weston, one of the first such events recorded in America, and a thirty-pound fragment became the nucleus of Yale University's meteorite collection. Incorporated in 1787, Weston prospered through onion farming and early industries, with forested slopes supplying charcoal and rapidly falling rivers powering iron forges and foundries whose products were shipped throughout the East. After the population peaked at 2997 in 1830, it steadily declined to 1117 in 1860, 840 in 1900, and 670 in 1930 because territory was lost to form Westport and Easton, richer Ohio farmlands opened, steam-powered industry rose on the coast, and the town remained isolated from canals and railroads. Lyon's Plain and Valley Forge continued as population centers, wandering Indians still camped in the Den as late as the 1880's, and in the early 1900's artists, musicians, theatre people, writers, and summer colonists were followed after the Second World War by waves of commuters arriving by automobile and bringing renewed life to the town.