The spring session of the 1703 General Assembly granted Woodbury the right to enlarge its bounds, and after negotiations with the Indian inhabitants were concluded, a 1710 deed of sale signed by Nunawague and five other chiefs conveyed to Woodbury nearly eighteen thousand acres known as the North Purchase, including the present town of Bethlehem and parts of the later Judea, now Washington. Surveyed in 1723 and divided into lots after proprietors were granted their rights, the land was opened for sale. Pioneers arrived in 1734 and settled on the heights northeast of the present center. In 1738 young Joseph Bellamy was called to preach during winter privileges, and separate society privileges were granted in October 1739. Bellamy was then requested to continue as pastor and remained until his death in 1790, while the settlers established their own Bethlem Church and school. Doctor Bellamy became a distinguished author, preacher, and teacher and conducted the first theological school in America, where young men lived in his home as he instructed them in his scriptural interpretation and preaching methods; among future leaders who studied there were Aaron Burr, Jonathan Edwards II, and James Morris. Bethlem men served in the French and Indian and all subsequent wars, and many captains and lieutenants are buried in the Old Cemetery. Bethlem was incorporated as a separate town in 1787. Mainly a farming community until the 1900s, it also had enough water power for eighteenth-century industries including fulling mills, a cotton mill, a woolen mill, a wagon factory, a straw hat and bonnet factory, and miscellaneous manufactories of leather goods.