East Plymouth, also known as East Church, developed as a distinct community at the boundary of Bristol, Plymouth, and Harwinton after a 1747 dispute in the Church of England congregation in New Cambridge split worshippers into Calvinistic New Lights under the Rev. Samuel Newell and Old Lights who remained in the Church of England. During the Revolution, many East Church residents stayed loyal to the King of England, bringing them into sharp conflict with Captain John Wilson of Harwinton and his Sons of Liberty. The Rev. James Nichols, called to the area in August 1773 at age 25, strengthened loyalist feeling among his congregation and was hunted by Wilson's followers, who once found him hiding near Cyrus Gaylord's home, tarred and feathered him, dragged him into a brook, and reportedly made several attempts on his life; though tried in Hartford in January 1777 for treasonable practices against the United States, he was acquitted. Moses Dunbar, captured on Chippeny Hill, was hanged in Hartford on March 19, 1777, the only person executed as a traitor through legal trial in Connecticut. Stephen Graves, whose house often served as a meeting place for loyalists, took oaths of fidelity in 1778, hired a substitute when drafted into the Continental Army, then refused to fight or pay for a second substitute, after which a mob seized him, beat him near a fork in the roads north of St. Matthew's Church, and later failed to recapture him after he escaped to Tories Den in the northern Old Marsh. That cave, rediscovered in 1838 by his grandson X.A. Welton, was associated with many loyalists, including Joel Tuttle, who sought refuge there after being cut down from a hanging on Federal Hill Green, as well as Simon Tuttle, Daniel Tuttle, Ebenezer Tuttle, Constant Loyal Tuttle, the Carringtons, Lemuels, Captain Nathaniel Jones and Matthews, and the Matthews and Jerome families. After the Revolution, sympathy for the Church of England remained strong enough that in 1790 the General Assembly allowed residents of eastern Northbury and southern Harwinton to form St. Matthew's parish, originally the Second Episcopal Society. St. Matthew's Episcopal Church was completed in 1794, consecrated by Bishop Samuel Seabury on October 21, 1795, and at the same time the Rev. Alexander Viets Griswold was ordained; as rector, Griswold guided the community toward peaceful postwar life and grew the congregation to about 220 communicants. The area also developed economically: Luman Preston built a carding machine and mill in 1815 and added a gristmill in 1818; Cyrus Gaylord operated a carding mill and another building for spinning, weaving, and cloth dressing, with Sextus and Joseph Gaylord handling business affairs; and Josiah Kimberly used part of the Gaylord building as a tannery. At its peak the village was busier in manufacturing than Terryville, and Eli Terry considered diverting Poland Brook by canal into the Old Marsh, but local opposition and refusal to sell key property prevented that expansion. As industrialization drew workers to Bristol and Terryville, local industry declined and church membership fell, leaving a quieter village of period houses; the area was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places as a Historic District in 1985. Among those buried in St. Matthew's Cemetery is Constant Loyal Tuttle, born in Bristol on January 28, 1775, whose father Ebenezer Tuttle gave him that name to signal undiminished loyalist feeling despite pressure to profess allegiance to the rebelling colonial governments; Constant Loyal Tuttle later married Chloe Matthews, lived on Hill Street in Chippens Hill, built a tannery, belonged to the Free Masons, served as a Justice of the Peace, and died in 1858.