Before 1750, Marlborough's town center stood in the area of the present Walker Building, with a Meeting House, the minister's house, and a blacksmith shop. In the 1750's, British loyalist Henry Barnes built a home at the corner of Main and Bolton Streets and established the town's first manufacturing firm, first retail store, and a cider distillery. Around these enterprises, the area then known as the East Village became Marlborough's commercial center. After the American Revolution, Barnes was banished as a traitor, and William Cogswell bought the Barnes property and operated his store. Cogswell's brother-in-law, William Dawes, known as "the Other Rider" with Paul Revere, bought a home at the east end of Main Street and opened a grocery store. The stores of Cogswell and Dawes, together with the Sawin Tavern on East Main Street, increased the East Village's appeal to residents. In 1796, deliberations began over building a new Meeting House, and the town eventually voted to place it in the East Village at the current site of First Church, prompting an uproar from people living on the west end of town. After a failed effort to divide the town into two municipalities, a west Meeting House was built on Pleasant Street. In the years that followed, both the East and West Villages became important manufacturing, retail, and residential centers.