town, and Ashwillet and Pendleton Hill (known as Pauchunganuc until the 1840s), located respectively in the northwestern and northeastern corners of the town. Individual mills also emerged throughout the town to meet the grain and lumber milling needs of local communities at a distance from the five towns within the town. By the early part of the 19th century North Stonington's residents began to regard themselves as possessing a character separate from the communities of the southern part of the town to which they were still connected. The communities of Mystic, Stonington Borough, and Pawcatuck were far away—by the standards of the pre-automobile era—and, being of a seafaring nature, the "southerners" possessed significantly different needs and interests. Efforts by the southern communities from the late 18th century to build a number of relatively expensive construction projects along the coastline, such as a new road from Stonington Borough to Mystic and a bridge over Lambert's Cove, at first led residents of the northern end of the town to oppose budgeting monies for these projects, and eventually caused the northerners to secede and form their own town. At a town hall meeting at Stonington's Road Church in April 1807, a small majority of voters decided for division, using the old dividing line between the North and South societies of the Congregationalist Church as the demarcation line. The new town then sent a request for the State Assembly to approve the measure. The Assembly, which met the following month, approved the new town's independence, but did not endorse the town's proposed new name of Jefferson, and instead directed that the town would be named "North Stonington", citing as justification that for almost a century the northern part of Stonington had been known by that name. While the Assembly's reasoning is superficially logical, its rejection of the name "Jefferson" almost certainly was motivated by the considerable antagonism held by dominant Federalist politicians in Hartford, who led New England in their opposition to President Jefferson and his policies. We do not know the reason why the country's third president—then midway through his second term—was so popular among North Stonington residents, although perhaps Jefferson's public criticism of the Congregational Church's domination of politics and religion in Connecticut earned him the loyalty of the local Baptist community, which perhaps regarded him as a champion of their rights in a state that still enshrined preferential rights to the