"Prescot another favorer of the Petitioners lost a horse and his loading in Sudbury river, and a week after his wife and children being upon another horse were hardly saved from drowning." That the kindly hearted Winthrop could coolly attribute the pitiable disaster of the brave pioneer to the wrath of God towards the political philosophy of Robert Child, pictures vividly the bigotry natural to the age and race, a bigotry which culminated in the horrors of the persecution for witchcraft. This Sudbury swamp was the lion in the path from the bay westward during many a decade. In 1645, an earnest petition went up to the council from Prescott and his associates, complaining that much time and means had been spent in discovering Nashaway and preparing for the settlement there, and that on account of the lack of bridge and causeway at the Sudbury River, the proprietors could not pass to and from the bay towns—"without exposing our persons to perill and our cattell and goods to losse and spoyle; as yo'r petitioners are able to make prooffe of by sad experience of what wee suffered there within these few dayes." The General Court ordered the bridge and way to be made, "passable for loaden horse," and allowed twenty pounds to Sudbury, "so it be donne w'thin a twelve monthe." The twelve month passed and no bridge spanned the stream. That the dangers and difficulties of the crossing were not over-stated by the petitioners is proven by the fact that more than one hundred years afterwards, the bridge and causeway at this place "half a mile long"—were represented to the General Court as dangerous and in time of floods impassable. Between 1759 and 1761, the proceeds of special lotteries amounting to twelve hundred and twenty seven pounds were expended in the improvement of the crossing.

John Winthrop, writing of the Nashaway planters, tells us that "he whom they had called to be their minister, [Norcross] left them for their delays," but omits mention of the fact recorded by the planters themselves in their petition, that the chief and sufficient cause of their slow progress was in the inability or unwillingness of the Governor and magistrates to afford effective aid in providing a passable crossing over a small river.

Prescott, at least, was chargeable with no delay. By June 1645, he and his family had become permanent residents on the Nashaway. Richard Linton, Lawrence Waters the carpenter, and John Ball the tailor, were his only neighbors; these three men having been sent up to build, plant, and prepare for the coming of other proprietors. But two houses had been built. Linton probably lived with his son-in-law Waters, in his home near the fording place in the North Branch of the Nashaway, contiguous to the lot of intervale land which Harmon Garrett and others of the first proprietors had fenced in to serve as a "night pasture" for their cattle. Ball had left his children and their mother in Watertown; she being at times insane. Prescott's first lot embraced part of the grounds upon which the public buildings in Lancaster now stand, but this he soon parted with, and took up his abode a mile to the south west, on the sunny slope of George Hill, where, beside a little brooklet of pure cool water, which then doubtless came rollicking down over its gravelly bed with twice the flow it has to-day, there had been built, two years at least before, the trucking house of Symonds & King. This trading post was the extreme outpost of civilization; beyond was interminable forest, traversed only by the Indian trails, which were but narrow paths, hard to find and easy to lose, unless the traveller had been bred to the arts of wood-craft. Here passed the united trails from Washacum, Wachusett, Quaboag, and other Indian villages of the west, leading to the wading place of the Nashaway River near the present Atherton Bridge, and so down the "Bay Path" over Wataquadock to Concord. The little plateau half way down the sheltering hill, with fertile fields sloping to the southeast and its never failing springs, was and is an attractive spot; but its material advantages to the pioneer of 1645 were far greater than those apparent to the Lancastrian of this nineteenth century in the changed conditions of life. With the privilege of first choice therefore, it is not strange that Prescott and his sturdy sons-in-law grasped the rich intervales, and warm easily tilled slopes, stretching along the Nashaway south branch from the "meeting of the waters" to "John's jump" on the east, and extending west to the crown of George Hill; lands now covered by the village of South Lancaster.

In 1650 John Prescott found himself the only member of the company resident at Nashaway. Of the co-partners Symonds, King, and John Hill were dead; Norcross and Child had gone to England; Cowdall had sold his rights to Prescott; Chandler, Davis, Walker, and others had formally abandoned their claims; Garrett, Shawe, Day, Adams, and perhaps two or three others, retained their claims to allotments, making no improvements, and contributing nothing by their presence or tithes to the growth of the settlement, thus becoming effectual stumbling blocks in the way of progress. Prescott, very reasonably, held this a grievance, and having no other means of redress asked equitable judgment in the matter from the magistrates, in a petition which cannot be found. His answer was the following official snub:

"Whereas John Prescot & others, the inhabitants of Nashaway p'ferd a petition to this Courte desiringe power to recover all common charges of all such as had land there, not residinge wth them, for answer whereunto this Court, understandinge that the place before mentioned is not fit to make a plantation, (so a ministry to be erected and mayntayned there,) which if the petitioners, before the end of the next session of this Courte, shall not sufficiently make the sey'd place appeare to be capable to answer the ends above mentioned doth order that the p'ties inhabitinge there shalbe called there hence, & suffered to live without the meanes, as they have done no longer." This dire threat of the closing sentence may have been simply "sound and fury, signifying nothing," or Prescott may have been able to prove to the authorities that Nashaway was fit and waiting for its St. John, but found none willing for the service. In fact, its St. John was then a junior at Harvard College, writing a pasquinade to post upon the Ipswich meeting-house, and Nashaway was "suffered to live without the meanes," waiting for him until 1654.

John Prescott retained possession of his early home,—the site of the "trucking house," which he had purchased of John Cowdall,—as long as he lived, but did not reside there many years. No sooner had the plantation attained the dignity of a township under the classic name of Lancaster, than its founder bent all his energies towards those enterprises best calculated to promote the comfort and prosperity of its then inhabitants, and to attract by material advantages, a desirable and permanent immigration. His practical eye had doubtless long before marked the best site for a mill in all the region round about, and on the slope, scarce a gun shot away, he set up a new home, afterwards well known to friend and savage foe as Prescott's Garrison. Those who remain of the generation familiar with this region before the invention of the power loom made such towns as Clinton possible, remember the depression that told where Prescott dug his cellar. The oldest water mill in New England was scarce twenty years old when Prescott contracted to grind the com of the Nashaway planters. His "Covenant to build a Corne mill" has been preserved through a copy made by Ralph Houghton, Lancaster's first Clerk of the Writs, and is as follows:

"Know all men by these presents that I John Prescott blackssmith, hath Covenanted and bargained with Jno. ffounell of Charlestowne for the building of a Corne mill, within the said Towne of Lanchaster. This witnesseth that wee the Inhabitants of Lanchaster for his encouragement in so good a worke for the behoofe of our Towne, vpon condition that the said intended worke by him or his assignes be finished, do freely and fully giue, grant, enfeoffe, & confirme vnto the said John Prescott, thirty acres of intervale Land lying on the north riuer, lying north west of Henry Kerly, and ten acres of Land adjoyneing to the mill; and forty acres of Land on the south east of the mill brooke, lying between the mill brooke and Nashaway Riuer in such place as the said John Prescott shall choose with all the priuiledges and appurtenances thereto apperteyneing. To haue and to hold the said land and eurie parcell thereof to the said John Prescott his heyeres & assignes for euer, to his and their only propper vse and behoofe. Also wee do covenant & promise to lend the said John Prescott fiue pounds in current money one yeare for the buying of Irons for the mill. And also wee do covenant and grant to and with the said John Prescott his heyres and assignes that the said mill, with all the aboue named Land thereto apperteyneing shall be freed from all com'on charges for seauen yeares next ensueing, after the first finishing and setting the said mill to worke.

In witnes whereof wee haue herevnto put our hands this 20th day of the 9mo. In the yeare of our Lord God one thousand six hundred fifty and three.

THOMAS JAMES

WILLM KERLY SENR