nothing be done without their Consent and aprobation. And
furthermore in Reference to the mouables it is his will that his
son John have his anvill and after the debts and legacies
aformentioned be truly paid and fully discharged by the executors
and the speciall trust pformed vnto my wife during her life and at
her death, in Respect of, sicknes funerall expences, the Remainder
of the movables to be equaly deuided betwene my two sons John and
Jonathan aforementioned. And for a further and fuller declaration
and confirmation of this will to be the last will and testament of
the afornamed John Prescott he hath herevnto put his hand and
seale this 8 of 2 month one thousand six hundred seaventie three.

JOHN PRESCOTT,

his _John_ mark.

Sealed signed owned to be the Last will and testament of the
testator afornamed In the presence of

JOSEPH ROWLANDSON,
ROGER SUMNER,
RALPH HOUGHTON.

April 4: 82.

ROGER SUMNER, }
RALPH HOUGHTON, } Appearing in Court
made oath to the above s'd will,

JONATHAN REMINGTON, _Cleric_."

But John Prescott's pilgrimage was far from ended, and severer
chastenings than any yet experienced awaited him. He had survived to see
the settlement that called him father, struggle upward from discouraging
beginnings, to become a thriving and happy community of over fifty
families. Where at his coming all had been pathless woods, now fenced
fields and orchards yielded annually their golden and ruddy harvests;
gardens bloomed; mechanic's plied their various crafts; herds wandered
in lush meadows; bridges spanned the rivers, and roads wound through the
landscape from cottage to cottage and away to neighboring towns. All
this fair scene of industry and rural content, of which he might in
modest truth say "_Magna pars fui_," he lived to see in a single day
made more desolate than the howling wilderness from which it had been
laboriously conquered. He was spared to see dear neighbors and kindred
massacred in every method of revolting atrocity, and their wives and
children carried into loathsome captivity by foes more relentlessly
cruel than wolves. When now weighed down with age and bodily
infirmities, the rest he had thought won was to be denied him, and he
and his were driven from the ashes of pleasant homes--about which
clustered the memories of thirty years' joys and sorrows--to beg