2. Martha, baptized at Halifax Parish March 11, 1632, married John Rugg in 1655; and these twain began life together in sight of her paternal home in Lancaster. She died with her twin babes in January 1656.
3. John, baptized at Halifax Parish April 1, 1635, married Sarah Hayward at Lancaster, November 11, 1668, and had five children. He was a farmer and blacksmith, lived with his father, and succeeded him at the mills.
4. Sarah, baptized in 1637, at Halifax Parish, married Richard Wheeler at Lancaster, August 2, 1658, and lived in the immediate vicinity of those before named. Wheeler was killed in the massacre of February 10, 1676, and the widowed Sarah married Joseph Rice of Marlborough. By her first husband she had five children.
5. Hannah, was probably born at Barbadoes in 1639. She became the second wife of John Rugg May 4, 1660, and had eight children. She became a widow in 1696, and was slain by the Indians in the massacre of September 11, 1697.
6. Lydia, born at Watertown August 15, 1641, married Jonas Fairbank at Lancaster, May 28, 1658. He owned the lands next south of Prescott's home. Fairbank had seven children. In the massacre of February 10, 1676, he and his son Joshua were victims. The widowed Lydia married Elias Barron.
7. Jonathan—if twenty three years old in 1670, as an unknown authority has noted, or "about 38," November 6, 1683, as stated in a deposition of that date—was probably born in Lancaster between 1645 and 1647. He was a blacksmith and farmer, and married first Dorothy, August 3, 1670, in Lancaster. She died in 1674, leaving a son Samuel, noted in the town history as the unfortunate sentinel who, on November 6, 1704, killed by mistake his neighbor, the beloved minister of Lancaster, Reverend Andrew Gardner. Jonathan Prescott married second, Elizabeth, daughter of John Hoar of Concord, who died in 1687 leaving six children. Jonathan's third wife was Rebecca Bulkeley and his fourth Ruth, widow of Thomas Brown. He did not reside in Lancaster after the massacre of 1676, but became an influential citizen of Concord, which he served as representative for nine years. He died December 5, 1721.
8. Jonas, born June, 1648, in Lancaster, married Mary Loker of Sudbury, December 14, 1672. The marriage took place in Lancaster and here their first child was born, (they had twelve children in all), but later they removed to Groton, where Jonas became Captain, Selectman and Justice. He died in Groton, December 31, 1723. Of his more illustrious descendants were Colonel William, and the historian William H. Prescott.
In May 1644, John Winthrop records that "Many of Watertown and other towns joined in a plantation at Nashaway "—and Reverend Timothy Harrington in his Century Sermon states that the organization of this company of planters was due to Thomas King. The immediate and final disappearance of this original proprietor has seemed to previous writers good warrant for charging that King and his partner Henry Symonds were but land speculators, who bought the Indian's inheritance to retail by the acre to adventurers. I believe this an unjust assumption. At the date when Winthrop noted down the inception of the Nashaway Company, Henry Symonds had already been dead seven months. He was that energetic contractor of Boston noted as the leader in the project for establishing tide mills at the Cove, and was no doubt the capitalist of the trading firm of Symonds & King, who set up their "trucking house" as early as 1643 on the sunny slope of George Hill. Symond's widow a few months after his death married Isaac Walker, who in 1645 was prominent among the Nashaway proprietors. If King really sold his share of the Indian purchase, may it not have been therefore because, his senior partner being dead, he had no means to continue the enterprise? He too died before the end of the year 1644, not yet thirty years of age. The inventory of his estate sums but one hundred and fifty-eight pounds, including his house and land in Watertown, his stock in trade, and seventy-three pounds of debts due him from the Indians, John Prescott, and sundry others. King's widow made haste to be consoled, and her second husband, James Cutler, soon appears in the role of a Nashaway proprietor.
The direction of the company was at the outset in the hands of men whose names were, or soon became, of some note throughout the Colony. Doctor Robert Child, a scholar who had won the degrees of A.M. and M.D. at Cambridge and Padua, a man of scientific acquirements, but inclined to somewhat sanguine expectations of mineral treasure to be discovered in the New England hills, seems to have been a leading spirit in the adventure; and unfortunately so, since his political views about certain inalienable rights of man, which now live, and are honored in the Constitution of the Commonwealth, seemed vicious republicanism to the ecclesiastical aristocracy then governing the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay; and the odium that drove Child across the ocean, attached also to his companion planters, and perhaps through the prejudice of those in authority unfavorably affected for several years the progress of the settlement on the Nashaway. Certainly such prejudices found expression in all action or record of the government respecting the proprietors and their petitions. The ecclesiastical figure head—without which no body corporate could have grace within the colony—was Nathaniel Norcross. Of him, if we can surmise aught from his early return to England, it may be said, he was not imbued with the martyr's spirit, and his defection was, some time later, more than made good by the accession of the beloved Rowlandson. But far more important to the enterprise than these two graduates from the English University—Child the radical, and Norcross the preacher,—were two mechanics, the restless planners and busy promoters of the company, both workers in iron—Steven Day the locksmith and John Prescott the blacksmith. Steven Day was the first in America, north of Mexico, to set up a printing-press. The Colony had wisely recognized in him a public benefactor, and sealed this recognition by substantial grant of lands. He entered upon the Nashaway scheme with characteristic zeal and energy, if we may believe his own manuscript testimony: but Day's zeal outran his discretion, and his energy devoured his limited means, for in 1644 we find him in jail for debt remonstrating piteously against the injustice of a hard hearted creditor. He parted with all rights at Nashaway before many years and finally delved as a journey man at the press he had founded.
John Prescott deserted of all his original co-partners was sufficient for the emergency, a host in himself. He sells his one hundred and twenty six acres and house at Watertown, puts his all into the venture, prepares a rude dwelling in the wilderness, moves thither his cattle, and chattels, and finally, mounting wife and children and his few remaining goods upon horses' backs, bids his old neighbors good bye, and threads the narrow Indian trail through the forest westward. The scorn of men high in authority is to follow him, but now the most formidable enemy in his path is the swollen Sudbury River and its bordering marsh. We find the aristocratic scorn mingling with the story of Prescott's dearly bought victory over this natural obstacle, told in Winthrop's History of New England among what the author classes as remarkable "special providences."