Settlement of the area soon to be named Hebron began in 1704 on land deeded by the Indian sachem Joshua in 1676, and the town was incorporated in 1708. It was nicknamed “Pump Town” after a log cannon, made like a wooden water pump, blew up when fired in 1758 to celebrate the capture of the fortress of Louisbourg, a notable English victory in the French and Indian War. Anglican minister Samuel Peters, driven out in 1774 because of his Tory sympathies, later wrote a history of Connecticut that included the puritanical “blue laws” attributed to New Haven. His nephew, John S. Peters, who was also born here, served as Governor of Connecticut from 1831 to 1833. Judge Sylvester Gilbert, a prominent congressman and legislator, opened a law school here in 1810, and the evangelist Lorenzo Dow lived here from 1817 to 1820. The Missionary Society of Connecticut, the oldest in the nation, was founded here in 1798. Though chiefly agricultural since its founding, Hebron also had several silk, cotton, and paper mills and an iron furnace in the nineteenth century, and Ams-Sterling automobiles were manufactured here briefly. The Old Town Hall, built in 1838, survived the fire of 1882 that destroyed much of the colonial center. Included within the town are Amston, formerly Turnerville, once a thriving mill area, and Gilead, which grew up around the Congregational Church founded there in 1748. Hebron’s size was reduced in 1803 when part of it was taken to form part of Marlborough, and again in 1848 for the incorporation of Andover. Westward migration and the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century caused a population decline that reached its low point in the 1930s, but since World War II, and especially since 1960, many people commuting to work in the Hartford area have settled in Hebron.