56
��The Boundary Lines of Old Grot on. — //.
��stated that the town had lost more than twenty-seven hundred and eighty- eight acres by the encroachment of Littleton line ; and that two farms had been laid out within the plantation before it was granted to the proprietors. Under these circumstances Benjamin Prescott was authorized to present the petition to the General Court, setting forth the true state of the case and all the facts connected with it. The two farms alluded to were Major Simon Willard's, situated at Nonacoicus or Coicus, now within the limits of Ayer, and Ralph Reed's, in the neighbor- hood of the Ridges ; so Mr. Butler told me several years before his death, giving Judge James Prescott as his authority, and I carefully wrote it down at the time. The statement is confirmed by the report of a committee on the peti- tion of Josiah Sartell, made to the House of Representatives, on June 13, 1 7 7 1 . Willard's farm, however, was not laid out before the original plantation was granted, but in the spring of 1658, three years after the grant. At this time Danforth had not made his plan of the plantation, which fact may have given rise to the misapprehension. Ralph Reed was one of the original proprietors of the town, and owned a fifteen-acre right ; but I do not find that any land was granted him by the General Court.
It has been incorrectly supposed, and more than once so stated in print, that the gore of land, petitioned for by Benjamin Prescott, lay in the territory now belonging to Pepperell ; but this is a mistake. The only unappropriated land between Dunstable and Townsend, as asked for in the petition, lay in the angle made by the western boundary of Dunstable and the northern bound- ary of Townsend. At that period
��Dunstable was a very large township, and included within its territory several modern towns, lying mostly in New Hampshire. The manuscript records of the General Court define very clearly the lines of the gore, and leave no doubt in regard to it. It lay within the present towns of Mason, Brookline, Wilton, Milford, and Green- ville, New Hampshire. Benjamin Pre- scott was at the time a member of the General Court and the most in- fluential man in town. His petition was presented to the House of Repre- sentatives on November 28, 1734, and referred to a committee, which made a report thereon a fortnight later. They are as follows : —
A Petition of Benjatnin Prescot, Esq ; Representative of the Town of Groton, and in behalf of the Proprietors of the said Town, shewing that the General Court in May 1655, in answer to the Peti- tion of Mr. Dean Winihrop and others, were pleased to grant the Petitioners a tract of Land of the contents of eight miles square, the Plantation to be called Groton, that in taking a Plat of the said tract there was no allowance made for prior Grants &c. by means whereof and in settling the Line with Littleton Amio 171 S, or thereabouts, the said Town of Groton falls short more than four thousand acres of the Original Grant, praying that the said Proprietors may obtain a Grant of what remains undisposed of of a Gore of Land lying between Dimstable and Towns/lend, or an equivalent elsewhere of the Province Land. Read and Ordered, That Col. Chandler, Capt. Blattchard, Capt. Hobson, Major Epes, and Mr. Hale, be a Committee to take this Petition under consideration, and report what may be proper for the Court to do in answer thereto.
rjournal of the House of Representatives, November 28, 1734, page 94.]
Col. Chandler from the Committee appointed the 28///. ult. to consider the
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