We get very few glimpses of Prescott from the meagre records of succeeding years, but those serve to indicate that he was busy, prosperous and annually honored by his neighbors with the public duties for which his sturdy integrity, shrewd business tact, and wisely directed energy peculiarly fitted him. He had taken the oath of fidelity in 1652. Such owning of allegiance was by law prerequisite to the holding of real estate. Refusing such oath he might better have been a Nipmuck so far as civil rights or privileges were concerned. He was not yet a member of the recognized church however, and therefore lacked the political dignities of a freeman; although his intimate relations with Master Joseph Rowlandson, and his personal connection with the earlier cases of church discipline in Lancaster, sufficiently attest the austerity of his puritanism. Doubtless Governor John Winthrop in his hasty and harsh dictum respecting the Nashaway planters, classed John Prescott among those "corrupt in judgment." But it must be remembered that in Winthrop's visionary commonwealth there was no room for liberty of conscience. All were esteemed corrupt in judgment or even profane whose religious beliefs, when tested all about by the ecclesiastic callipers, proved not to have been cast in the doctrinal mould prescribed by the self-sanctified founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. No known fact in any way warrants even the conjecture that Prescott was not a sincere Christian earnestly pursuing his own convictions of duty, without fear and without reproach.
Prescott's mechanical skill and business ability had more than a local reputation. In 1667, we find him contracting with the authorities of Groton, to erect "a good and sufficient corne mill or mills, and the same to finish so as may be fitting to grind the corne of the said Towne." ... For the fulfillment of this agreement he received five hundred and twenty acres of land, and mill and lands were exempted from taxation for twenty years. Assistance towards the building of the mill were also promised to the amount of "two days worke of a man for every house lott or family within the limitts of the said Towne, and at such time or times to be done or performed, as the said John Prescott shall see meete to call for the same, vpon reasonable notice given." The covenant was fulfilled by the completion of a mill at Nonacoiacus, then in the southern part of Groton. The mill site is now in Harvard. Prescott's youngest son, Jonas, was the first miller. The history of the old mill is obscured by the shadows of two hundred years, but a bright gleam of romantic tradition concerning the first miller is warm with human interest now. Perhaps at points the romantic may infringe upon the historic, but:
Se non e vero,
E ben trovato.
Down by the green meadows of Sudbury there dwelt a bewitchingly fair maiden, the musical dissyllables of whose name were often upon the lips of the young men in all the country round about, and whose smile could awaken voiceless poetry in the heart of the most prosaic Puritan swain. There is little of aristocratic sound in Mary Loker's name, but her parents sat on Sunday at the meeting house in a "dignified" pew, and were rich in fields and cattle. Whether pushed by pride of land or pride of birth, in their plans and aspirations, this daughter was predestinated to enhance the family dignity by an aristocratic alliance. In Colonial days a maiden who added a handsome prospective dowry to her personal witchery was rare indeed, and Mary Loker had, coming from far and near, inflammable suitors perpetually burning at her shrine. From among these the father and mother soon made their choice upon strictly business principles, and shortly announced to Mary that a certain ambitious gentleman of the legal profession had furnished the most satisfactory credentials, and that nothing remained but for her to name the day. Now the fourth commandment was very far from being the dead letter in 1670 that it is in 1885, and it was matter for grave surprise to the elders that their usually obedient daughter, when the lawyer proceeded to plead, refused to hear, and peremptorily adjourned his cause without day. Maternal expostulation and paternal threats availed nothing. The because of Mary's contumacy was not far to seek. A stalwart Vulcan in the guise of an Antinous, known as Jonas Prescott, had wandered from his father's forge in Lancaster down the Bay Path to Sudbury. Mary and he had met, and the lingering of their parting boded ill for any predestination not stamped with their joint seal of consent. With that lack of astuteness proverbially exhibited by parents disappointed in match-making designs upon their children, the vexed father and mother began a course of vigorous repression, and thereby riveted more firmly than ever the chains which the errant young blacksmith and his apprentice Cupid had forged. In due time, they perforce learned that love's flame burns the brighter fed upon a bread and water diet; and that confinement to an attic may be quite endurable when Cupid's messages fly in and out of its lattice at pleasure.
Finally Mary was secretly sent to an out-of-the-way neighborhood in the vain hope that the chill of absence might hinder what home rule had only served to help. But one day Jonas on a hunting excursion made the acquaintance of some youth, who, among other chitchat, happened to break into ecstatic praise of the graces of a certain fair damsel who had recently come to live in a farm-house near their home. Of course the anvil missed Jonas for the next day, and the next, and the next, while he experienced the hospitalities of his new-found friends—and their neighbors. It was time for a recognition of the inevitable by all concerned, but when, and with what grace Mary's stubborn parents yielded, if at all, is not recorded. But what mattered that? Old John Prescott installed Jonas at the Nonacoicus Mill, and endowed him with all his Groton lands, and in Lancaster, December 14, 1672, Jonas and Mary were married. For over fifty years fortunes railed upon their union. Four sons and eight daughters graced their fireside, and the father was trusted and clothed with local dignities. In after time the memory of Jonas and Mary has been honored by many worthy descendants, and especially by the gallant services of Colonel William Prescott at Bunker Hill, and the literary renown of William Hickling Prescott, the historian.
In 1669, John Prescott was proclaimed a Freeman. He may have been long a Church member, or may not even at this date have yielded the conscientious scruples that had a quarter of a century earlier subjected him to the reproach of an ecclesiastical oligarchy. The laws concerning Freemen, in reluctant obedience to the letter of Charles II., were so changed in 1665 that those not Church members could become Freemen, if freeholders of a sufficient estate, and guaranteed by the local minister "to be Orthodox and not vicious in their lives." Prescott had the true Englishman's love of landed possessions, and about this time added a large tract to his acreage by purchase from his Indian neighbors. This transaction gave cause for the following petition:
To the honorable the Govr the Deputy Govr magtr & Deputy es assembled in the genrall Court:
The Petition of Jno Prescott of Lanchaster, In most humble wise sheweth. Whereas ye Petitionr hath purchased an Indian right to a small parcell of Land, occasioned and circumstanced for quantity & quality according to the deed of sale herevnto annexed and a pt. thereof not being legally setled vpon piee vnlesse I may obteyne the favor of this Court for the Confirmation thereof, These are humbly to request the Court's favor for that end, the Lord hauing dealt graciously with mee in giueing mee many children I account it my duty to endeauor their provission & setling and do hope that this may be of some vse in yt kind. I know not any claime made to the said land by any towne, or any legall right yt any other persons haue therein, and therefore are free for mee to occupy & subdue as any other, may I obteyne the Court's approbation. I shall not vse further motiues, my condition in other respecks & wt my trouble & expenses haue been according to my poor ability in my place being not altogether vnknowne to some of ye Court. That ye Lord's prsence may be with & his blessing accompany all yor psons, Counsells, & endeauors for his honor & ye weale of his poor people is ye prayr of
Yor supplliant