officer in the militia during a successful standoff against a British naval raiding party against Stonington Borough in August 1775, then served as a company commander in the Eighth Regiment of Militia during the following year's campaign in New York. Elias Sanford Palmer served as a lieutenant in Wadsworth's Brigade during the Long Island campaign in late 1776 and remained in the militia service during the war and beyond; by the 1790s, he was commander of the 30th Militia Regiment. Charles Hewitt, an enlisted man, was part of a 40-member raiding party that captured General Richard Prescott at his home in Newport, Rhode Island during the night of July 10, 1777. Prescott was the British commander of a large occupation force of Hessian soldiers. In contrast to Wheeler and Palmer, Hewitt died young, perishing of yellow fever while at sea in 1779. Mills and incorporation: Late 18th century to mid-19th century As early as the first part of the 18th century first- and second-generation farmers in North Stonington began harnessing the power of the town's rivers and streams to establish grist mills and sawmills. For example, Samuel Richardson, one of the first settlers in what is now the village, already had a mill in use along the Shunock River by 1702. However, it was only in the 1790s, after the United States had gained its independence, that mills began to emerge throughout the town in a serious way. The primary reason for this was that the town's farmers were no longer focused on clearing land and subsistence cultivation, and were now producing ever-larger crop and livestock yields that could be exported to markets, either in Connecticut or as far away as in Boston and the West Indies. Second, during this period the country was emerging into a period of economic prosperity after the deprivations and uncertainty of the war years. Mills during the late 18th century quickly began to proliferate in the village along the Shunock River to such an extent that the locale took the name of "Milltown", and the Avery family and other landowners began to sell lots along what is now the western end of Main Street to house businesses and dwellings for workers in the mills. Smaller communities, with their own churches, post offices, mills, and stores, emerged in Burch's Falls (renamed Clark's Falls in the 1860s) and Laurel Glen, both in the eastern end of