Revolutionary War was directed from the War Office on the Green and the adjacent home of Gov. Jonathan Trumbull Sr. One of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, William Williams, was a native of Lebanon, and son-in-law to the governor, Jonathan Trumbull. Jonathan Trumbull was the only British colonial governor to side with the rebel forces during the Revolution. Trumbull served as one of George Washington's chief quartermasters, convening a Council of Safety to manage the affairs of the Continental Army. The council met over 1,100 times, mostly in Trumbull's own house on the Lebanon Green. Trumbull was also paymaster general for the Northern Department of the Continental Army, and the first comptroller of the young nation's treasury during the war. Trumbull's children were also influential in the war effort: Joseph Trumbull was a colonel in the Continental Army, Jonathan Trumbull Jr. was secretary to George Washington, and John Trumbull served first as a soldier and then as Washington's personal aide during the war. In the winter and spring of 1781 (from November 1780 to June 21, 1781), the French duc de Lauzun's Legion of Horse, comprising 220 soldiers, encamped in Lebanon. Though the legion became infamous later for disorderliness, dueling, and pillaging, they were generally well behaved, and Lebanon saw only two officers executed by firing squad for attempted desertion. The local economy benefited from the troops' extended stay, but not significantly. In June, the soldiers rode off toward White Plains, New York. Lauzun remarked later in his memoirs, "Siberia alone can furnish any idea of Lebanon, which consists of a few huts scattered among vast forests." The importance of the Trumbull family and of Lebanon itself to the war effort earned the town the nickname "Heartbeat of the Revolution." Into the 19th and 20th centuries Joseph Trumbull, father of Jonathan Trumbull Sr., brought livestock farming to the town in 1704, and by 1730 Lebanon had the largest meat packing industry in Connecticut. Agriculture has since been the primary focus of the town. Lebanon entered a period of gentle decline after the Revolution; with the death of Jonathan Trumbull Jr. in 1809, the Trumbull family left Lebanon, and the town's political significance fell. Nonetheless, as the towns around it commercialized and modernized, Lebanon maintained its focus on agriculture, and remained a dedicated farming town. It was this characteristic that brought a major wave of immigration in the early