Voluntown grew from lands settled by volunteers who had fought in the Narragansett Indian Warre of 1675-76. In October 1696, Lieutenant Thomas Leffingwell of Norwich and Sergeant John Frink of Stonington petitioned the General Court so that they and the rest of the English volunteers in the former wars might receive a plantation, and a tract of land six miles square was granted. With land later added, this area comprised the present towns of Sterling and Voluntown. In 1708 the plantation was named "Volluntown," and on February 23, 1713/14, eight men led by Lieutenant Leffingwell formed a committee to manage it. The proprietors’ affairs progressed slowly, and town privileges were obtained on May 21, 1721. The Reverend Samuel Dorrance served as the first permanent minister from 1723 to 1770, and his church, established in 1723, was the first Presbyterian church in Connecticut. A Scotch Presbyterian who had arrived from Ireland and graduated from Glasgow University, Dorrance was accompanied to New England by several families of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who followed him to Voluntown and settled there. On December 4, 1732, the town voted to maintain a circulating school and hire a schoolmaster at the town's charge, and the first schoolhouse was built in 1737. In 1794, after complaints about the great distance between the north and south borders and the difficulty of traveling to the meeting house, a division created Sterling as a separate town. An extensive textile industry began here as early as 1814, when James Treat established the Industry Manufacturing Company, and its successor, the Beachdale Manufacturing Company, continued well into the present century.