Legend of the Third Horseman: Life and Times of Dr. Samuel Prescott, the Man Who Finished the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere

By Charles J. Caes

Samuel Prescott rode into history like a streak of lightning and out of it as quick as a flash. If it were not for Paul Reveres deposition of his own famous midnight ride, history might never remember Samuel. He was a young physician courting a clockmakers daughter and planning to dedicate his life to the practice of medicineuntil the American Revolution rewrote his destiny. But this is not only his story; it is also that of John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, William Dawes, Paul Revere, Thomas Hutchinson, Jonas Clark, the Mullikens, and those who died at Lexington and Concord and at Breeds and Bunker hills.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 15, 2009
• ISBN: 9781462824076

Charles J. Caes

Charles and Karen Caes live in Warrenton, Virginia. They have teamed together to present these Christmas stories to celebrate what Charles Dickens always considered to be the happiest season of the year. Mr. Caes is also the author of books on science, religion, history, and investment. You may also enjoy his Seven Hundred Years to Bethlehem: The Story of the Magi and the Birth of Jesus of Nazareth.

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Copyright © 2009 by Charles J. Caes.

2nd Printing 2010

Library of Congress Control Number:      2009900067

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Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

NOTES

REFERENCES

ILLUSTRATIONS

King George III

Philip Livingston

William Pitt, First Earl of Chatham

Robert Treat Paine

Paul Revere’s 1770 Engraving of the Massacre on King Street

John Adams

Ben Franklin

Sam Adams

John Hancock

First Shots at Lexington

General George Washington

General William Howe

Joseph Warren

General Richard Montgomery

An American Rifleman

Eighteenth-Century Quebec, about 1759

Figures 1 through 16 are reproduced, by permission, from the Collection of the Library of Congress. Figure 9 is from an engraving by I.B. Forrest; figure 10 from an etching by Berger; figure 11 from a 1705 drawing by Alex Campbell; figure 12 from a print by T. Robeson of Newcastle Tyne from an engraving produced for Miuray’s History of the American War; figure 13 from a 1775 drawing by J. Norman in 1775. The illustration on the cover of this book was provided by Piedmont Printing, Warrenton, Va.

In memory of Tom Rush, great neighbor, great friend, and loving husband of Jane. A descendent of the great American physician Benjamin Rush, he was much like Samuel Prescott. He came into this world, played his part well, brought happiness, and was always ready to help others. He was of that honest, hard-working, selfless generation born in the years of the great depression, and which knew the importance of sacrifice, the value of hard work, the significance of family, the need for religion, and the importance of service to one’s country.

PREFACE

In the autumn of 2005, unable to find any detailed information on the life of Dr. Samuel Prescott after sporadic but extensive research over a period of years, I assigned a researcher living in England to check any historical records about the revolutionary period that he might find. Perhaps there was some information to be found in British archives not available elsewhere. It was an unsuccessful shot in the dark, for the researcher turned up nothing more about Dr. Prescott than what I had already gathered from current summaries of his brief life.

Prescott kept a relatively low profile even during his years as a High Son of Liberty, as he referred to himself, even during his association with the Concord Committee of Correspondence. Nonetheless, there is plenty of hint he was an important player in pre-revolutionary patriot activities and in the first years of the Revolutionary War. For all the missing pages of his life, there are enough clues to help us find out about this remarkable young man and speculate on what may have happened to him.

There have been no book-length biographies of Samuel to date. Like millions of others who have made their contribution to the world but have become lost in time, he remains primarily a forgotten figure from America’s past. Deciding that a book I had planned on events leading to the Revolutionary War should be about him, I have tried to recreate his character and life. We all owe our thanks to another great patriot for first bringing Dr. Prescott to the attention of the world—patriot, soldier, craftsman, artist, and man for all seasons, Paul Revere.

Samuel Prescott rode into history like a streak of lightning and out of it as quick as a flash. If it were not for an account of Prescott’s derring-do in Paul Revere’s deposition of his famous ride, the Prescott genealogy, the mention of Sam’s name here and there in history books, we would never know of him. Because there are gaps in the chronology of his life and some biographical speculation is necessary to tie together the pieces, I have avoided using biography in the title and instead use legend.

Although the historical background in this book is from the most reliable sources, in those cases where there is a gap in chronological evidence, I have used the biographer’s license to draw on correlation and circumstance to bridge the passages of Dr. Prescott’s life. In a couple of instances, I have gone against traditional assumptions. For instance, are we actually to believe Dr. Prescott just happened to leave Concord at sunup to remain in Lexington until early the next morning on some private business or to court Ms. Mulliken—this on the day the British just happened to begin their march on Lexington and Concord? That he just happened to be there when important players in the defense of the colonies were gathered at the Buckman Tavern? The answer is, more likely than not, he was summoned to Lexington by John Hancock, Samuel Adams, or Jonas Clark.

I trust, in putting together this story of his life, I have done justice to the man, and to the Prescott family.

Charles J. Caes

March equinox, 2009

INTRODUCTION

In his 1835 History of the Town of Concord, Lemuel Shattuck includes an appendix, which provides notices of early families and distinguished members. In it, he provides a list of the Prescotts who lived in Concord, beginning with Jonathan Prescott, the common ancestor of the Concord branch of the family. He ends with the note that the Prescott family, once so numerous and influential, has no one now bearing its name in Concord.

In a period of about 150 years, generations of Prescotts, who were an integral part of the history of the town, were now scattered throughout the United States. Very few in Concord knew or remembered them. Like many of the forgotten families that braved the Atlantic to chance a new life in a strange, often unforgiving land, their story is lost in millions of pages of history, except in an occasional genealogy that may herald them.

In the fifth generation of the Prescotts who settled in Concord, Massachusetts, there was a young man who had followed in his father’s footsteps and became a physician and surgeon. Looking forward to life as a country doctor, he planned to settle down and raise a family with a clockmaker’s daughter from nearby Lexington, but destiny had other plans for him. He was Samuel Prescott, a descendent of Sir John Prescott who came to America in the 1640s to escape political and religious oppression in England. Samuel came into this world, played his part in the grand scheme of things, and then disappeared, leaving history only enough to record a few sentences about his life. Samuel, it appears, was a courier (express) and, perhaps, spy for the patriots, and later a volunteer surgeon in the Revolutionary War.

In attempting to piece together the life of this gallant young man, this book does so against the backdrop of events leading to and including the first years of the American Revolution.

This book may be divided into three major sections. Chapters 1 to 3 tell the story of early Prescotts in America—from Dr. Samuel Prescott’s great-great-grandfather to his father—introduce Samuel’s siblings, and describe the ethics and perspectives that likely shaped his character and personality. Chapters 4 to 10 present events leading to colonial dissatisfaction with England’s political and economic policies, introduce the early players in the patriot movement, and detail events leading directly to the revolution. Chapters 12 through 16 tell of the early battles of the war and Dr. Prescott’s last days. The strategy is to immerse the reader in events surrounding the life of Dr. Prescott, and thereby to compensate for the scarce biographical information on the brave and noble physician with events that shaped his life and character, and which give the reader the experience of having grown up in the same times as he.

CHAPTER 1

Heritage, 1638-1683

Dr. Samuel Prescott was born August 19, 1751, the same year that the British Government passed the law that January would henceforth be the beginning of the New Year. He enjoyed the privileges not only of growing up in the wholesome atmosphere of colonial Concord, Massachusetts, and within short distance of his many uncles, aunts, and cousins but also of being part of a family that was an integral part of Concord’s history.

Family gatherings in those days were not just social adventures but also important educational ones. Many of them were typical learning environments during which children developed their perspectives and attitudes and learned a great deal about family history. In hearing the stories of his ancestors, Samuel acquired a better understanding of what life and family were all about as well as having learned about Prescott character and courage. Reflecting upon his own range of interests, behavior patterns, and need to make his own contribution to the world, he must have closely identified with those ancestors who left England to face the dangers and opportunities waiting for them in the colonies.

EUROPEAN ROOTS

Samuel could trace his family history to the medieval Franks of Europe. The Prescott name, he would have learned, was one to be proud of even in days of old, just as it was one to be proud of in the Concord of his day. Prescott is a Saxon name and, therefore, of Germanic origin.¹ The name means priest’s house and is quite appropriate, considering that what brought the first Prescotts to the colonies was their need to be free of a King and Parliament that forgot for what England stood. England was no longer that brilliant promise on the pages of time, a land true within itself.

The madness of Charles I had driven the Prescotts to leave their beloved England on a two-hundred-foot long wooden sailing ship that gave little guarantee of safe arrival in the new lands across the deceitful and treacherous but beautiful Atlantic. Cramped in a small lower cabin that offered little protection from pounding waves and torrential downpours that accompanied oceans storms, they often ate uncooked food unless the captain believed the seas calm enough to allow them to cook meals above deck in special metal containers that limited the chance of sparks igniting wood or sail. They brought with them a small inventory of furniture, tools, and other personal items that would help them get started when they reached the new world.

The more ancient branches of the Prescott family were from Lancaster County (or, Lancashire), in England, the root of the name for Lancaster, Massachusetts, which Samuel’s great-great-grandfather helped found.

Throughout the family’s history in England, many of its members were honored with knighthood—with the Bart, Hampshire, and Lincoln branches having their own slightly differing versions of the family coat of arms, though all versions contained the image of three owls. The original emblem was conferred to one James Prescott, Samuel’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, for his exceptional daring, courage, and performance as a military officer.

The owls represented distinguishing traits of the Prescotts: watchfulness, wisdom, and cunning. The bird itself was the symbol of the mythical goddess Athena whose cunning and wisdom helped Perseus, son of Zeus, slay the gorgon Medusa. Like Athena, Prescotts were adept at finding the secret to success in whatever social or political environments they might find themselves. They were diligent, knowledgeable, and skillful. While they were, for the most part, farmers, millwrights, landowners, physicians, and peace-loving citizens, they were quick to arm themselves when necessary; and many saw careers in the military as well as in traditional occupations.

As the meticulous recorder of family genealogy until the mid-nineteenth century, Dr. William Prescott, who authored the Prescott Memorial published in 1872, wrote that other Prescott family groups—those from Theobold’s Park, Hartfordshire, Lancashire, and Yorkshire—proudly displayed this very same heraldic emblem at least through the nineteenth century.²

SIR JOHN PRESCOTT

Though he was not the first ancestor of the Concord branch of the family, Samuel’s great-great-grandfather, Sir John Prescott (1604-1681), was the first of Samuel’s direct bloodline to come to the colonies.³ He would exemplify courage and wisdom in finding his way to the New World at a time when sea voyages could be especially dangerous; and he would quickly demonstrate the self-sufficiency, family values, and neighborliness typical of Prescotts. Yet he remained independent in many ways, especially in his ideas on religion, in his attitudes about politics, and in his feeling about privileged classes. He was John Prescott to all, though in this book we refer to him as Sir John so he is easily remembered and distinguished from the cast of names to be met throughout this story. He believed all God-fearing, law-abiding, hardworking men and women were worthy of the same opportunities and treatment under the law.

Originally from Lancashire, England, where he had married 22-year-old Mary Platts-Gawkroger of Yorkshire in 1629, John never elaborated on or even mentioned his former title once he left England, nor is there any record that he showed the slightest regret about having left the motherland. Of his life and occupation in the Old Country, nothing much is known, except that he served as an officer in the military. Like him, many other Prescotts left England and never looked back.

GOOD-BYE, ENGLAND

Under Charles I (1600-1649), King of England, Scotland and Ireland, government was ever more oppressive, the justice system greatly prejudiced, and the penal system far too vicious for men of good will to tolerate. Charles came to the throne at the age of twenty-five and in short time proved to be an intolerable tyrant. In 1626, when Parliament attempted to impeach the Duke of Buckingham, a royal favorite, for his failure to assure the safety of the English fleet during the Cádiz expedition in 1625, Charles rescued the duke by dissolving that governing body. He later reinstated Parliament in 1628 but only to secure badly needed funding. He dissolved it again in 1629—this time for eleven years.

Those eleven years allowed Charles time he needed to control the courts and to wage an intolerant campaign against all who opposed the Church of England, at the time ruled by Archbishop William Laud (1573-1645). Laud wanted strict conformity of worship in churches throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland. Admired greatly by King Charles, Laud became a major player in affairs of state as well as in church politics, and there was no person or group with sufficient influence to wrestle away his infallible control and influence on religious matters. The results were economic and political persecution of dissenters and corresponding emigrations to America by Puritans, Catholics, Presbyterians, and other members of Christian sects—the Prescotts among them. Laud had forgotten that true religion was a matter of private rationale and emotional learning and nothing to be dictated by government.

By 1636, the Church of England was being referred to as the Laud’s Church by his critics, perhaps partly as a sarcastic play on the pronunciation of his name, which sounded then a bit like the word lord, but primarily because now Laud ruled the church. He wanted the Scots to use only the Anglican prayer book. In 1636, by royal decree, he got his way.

Puritans and others who wanted no guidance on religious matters other than from their personal interpretation of the Bible were already experiencing a decade of suppression by 1736 and were now being publicly embarrassed, humiliated, and sometimes cruelly punished. Those who were exceptionally public in their defiance of the Star Chamber (the English court of law)⁴ would find themselves deprived of academic credentials, imprisoned, or even mutilated—an ear or two cut off, a face scorched.⁵ Yet the Puritans had no special desire to replace the Anglican church. They were very satisfied to remain a part of it. They just wanted to reform it so that each congregation had the right to govern its way of worship as it saw fit—but based on interpretation of Scripture. Not all Christian denominations to this day, however, include the same biblical works in their cannon.

When John Prescott decided to leave England, King Charles I was attempting to force episcopacy (church government by bishops) upon the Scots, the vast majority of whom preferred to remain Presbyterian (that is, governed by elders). Charles intended to achieve his aims through military force, but the Scots challenged him. Because Charles never had much support from his subjects on any issue let alone on his use of religion for political aims, he conceded to the Scots in the Ripon Treaty of 1640. He also agreed to pay the Scots for their wartime expenditures.

By the time of the treaty, however, Sir John had already left England where he had been living in Sowerby, Halifax Parish. It was 1638, and his first destination was Barbados—with wife Mary, their son, and three daughters. The children were John, aged three; Mary, aged eight; Martha, aged six; and Sara, just over one year. It took some courage to chance a trip across the Atlantic with a wife and very young children in those days, but Sir John could not get out of England fast enough. He not only wanted to escape Laud and Charles but he was also eager to build his fortune, first with land speculation and then with whatever other skills he could draw upon to remain financially sound and liquid. The year of his arrival in Barbados, Mary gave birth to their fourth daughter, Hannah.⁶

BARBADOS

Though a Puritan at heart, Sir John was not much for formal worship or following the dictates of any specific Christian denomination. In fact, if he had any objection to the Puritan way; it was because it was often intolerant of unqualified churches. John would have seen such intolerance as a contradiction, for did not the Puritans leave the Old Country to find a place where they could worship as they pleased?

Like many other Englishmen, Sir John came to Barbados because he either qualified for land grants or saw the opportunities to buy into properties of value. Land in Barbados had been increasing in price at a phenomenal rate since a Captain Henry Powell landed there in 1627 with a shipload of settlers and a dozen slaves to support them. Captain Henry was not the first English seaman to approach the island, for a Captain John Powell first anchored off its shores two years before, and before him an English crew explored the island in 1605.

Until about 1605, Spanish conquistadores controlled the island. They had enslaved the local Caribs, as the island people were called in those days. Most of these Caribs were cannibalistic Native Americans originally known as Calingos or Calinos before their name became corrupted. The majority of these Caribs eventually escaped to other islands and left the Spanish with their island paradise but no labor with which to cultivate it. By the time John Powell arrived in 1605, the frustrated conquistadores had abandoned the island, and it was there for anyone’s taking.

Tobacco and then cotton were the early agricultural products of the first plantation owners, but by the time Sir John arrived, sugarcane had been introduced and was fast becoming the major commodity. On the surface, an enterprising immigrant with the right corrections and the courage and discipline to work hard would find the Barbados of the 1630s and 40s a dream come true. Here was an island paradise any Englishman could find to his liking, a land of sandstone and coral, hills of green, and impressive scenery all about. Though there were dry spells in the first half of the year and an occasional hurricane from June to October, the climate was easy to take. Northeast trade winds kept an eighty-degree temperature that never became unbearable. Even better still, the established families there were English, many of whom were related to or knew the families of the new immigrants. Barbados was, in those early years, something of a little England. Yet there was a dark side to Barbados. The 166-square-mile island paradise and the fortunes it promised not only attracted the well heeled like the Prescotts but eventually but also ruffians and criminals out to make a fortune at any cost.

While some of the smaller plantation owners worked the land themselves or employed labor under fair conditions, the majority recruited the very poor and uneducated from England, Scotland, and other parts of Europe and paid them minimal wages. As indentured servants, these economic underclassmen could not legally be enslaved, but their lives were controlled by the plantation owners for up to seven years; they needed permission if they ever wanted to travel from the plantations where they lived and worked. Lack of servants or slaves to work the larger plantations resulted in kidnappings of blacks, whites, and American Indians; and it led to the importation of convicted criminals under conditions of indenture. By the time of Sir John’s arrival, there was a law that slaves brought to Barbados were to remain slaves for their entire lives.

Europeans faced another special threat in Barbados and nearby islands, and that was the dreaded yellow fever, something against which the native tribes had no natural defense. European children, of course, had almost a 100 percent survival rate from infections by the mosquito that delivered this tropical disease; but European adults, rarely exposed to the threat in their childhood and unable to develop immunity, were at severe risk. Once this disease was contracted, there were no practical strategies at the time for coping with the problem other than resorting to bleeding the afflicted and suggesting to others that they should consider a quick retreat to less populated areas. The medical community at that time had no idea that the fever was not contagious. They only knew it occurred far, far less in scarcely populated areas.⁷ This was because the female mosquito that injects the virus into its victim belongs to a species that breeds in stagnant water, such as may be found in pots, uncovered barrels, open buckets, and nonabsorbing water-collecting crevices. These reservoirs are normally found in and around city dwellings and warehouses.

LANCASTER, PART 1

Clearly, Barbados had too many negatives for a responsible family man like John Prescott, who did not want to put his family at risk of disease or in the company of men or women whose ethics he questioned. In 1640, he put his family aboard ship once more, this time to bring them to Massachusetts where he first arrived in Boston; then he relocated to Watertown. Their daughter Lydia was born on August 15, 1641, and son Jonathan two years afterward. In 1645, he purchased land in Nashaway,⁸ which was incorporated as Lancaster in 1653. Their last child, Jonas, was born there in 1648.

Though held in great esteem by other settlers in Nashaway, John was not associated with any recognized church; and this was one of the qualifications for someone to be recognized as a freeman, the name given a full citizen of the colony. As a full citizen, he would have the right to vote in town meetings, elect deputies to the general assembly, elect new freeman, and hold public office. Thus when his neighbors thought of renaming the town Prescott, the court saw fit to reject the proposal and decided instead that it be named New Towne. How could they honor a man who was not a freeman?

Sir John may have guessed what the reason for the slight was, but no one actually came out and admitted it. In any event, a short time later the townspeople decided they wanted a far more meaningful name for their town. The courts finally agreed and New Towne became Lancaster, after Lancashire, England, from where most of the first settlers came, including Sir John.

Sir John would call Lancaster his home for about twenty-seven of the next thirty-four years until his death in 1683. There on his property, he built a home, a blacksmith shop, and a trading station. Later he built a sawmill. A man of extraordinary skills and ingenuity, his influence on the way of life in Lancaster was substantial even in terms of the types of homes his neighbors eventually constructed. Up until the time of his sawmill, houses in Lancaster were of the crudest sort, generally one-story wooden structures shaped by the strong arms of craftsmen who could cut and carve with axes and knives, and mesh tangled layers of leaves, stems, and possibly marsh plants into a dependable roof.

After Sir John’s sawmill was up and running, he could furnish boards, thereby allowing new homes not only to be built much faster but also much sturdier. These homes were now often two stories high instead of just one (at least in the front) and much more in style with homes in the larger towns of Massachusetts.

For the most part, Sir John earned his living primarily as a blacksmith though in those days, a blacksmith was involved in far more than just working with iron and steel. In his time and place, it was generally impossible to survive as a specialist. John would have expanded his services to include building gates, fences, furnaces, and probably almost anything that was needed for home and property, whether it was made of wood, iron or steel. He passed on his knowledge and skills to one of his sons, Jonas (June 1648-December 1723), who also became a blacksmith and builder of mills, and who is remembered in the history of Groton where he served as town clerk in 1691, as an assemblyman in 1699 and 1705, and as a justice of the peace.

Local Native American tribes were unpredictable, and on occasion, certain bands or entire tribes would give into their old raiding and fighting instincts. The good citizens of Lancaster had to always be on their guard. What made it particularly tough is that the threats were very infrequent, and it was easy to forget the ever-present danger and fall into a state of complacency and, therefore, high vulnerability. If Sir John had the time to do so, he would always defend against any war party in the coat of armor that he brought with him from England. It consisted of a metal helmet, iron-plated defensive body armor (called a cuirass) excellently hammered to protect his body from the bottom of the neck to the girdle, and a piece of neck-protecting armor called a gorget.

On one occasion, or so the story goes, he donned his armor to pursue a small party of Indians that had stolen one of his horses. When he caught up with them, they were surprised at his courage in pursuing them by himself but far more surprised at his battle armor. To prove his invincibility, he challenged one of the raiders to test the effectiveness of his armor with a blow from a tomahawk. Fortunately, his helmet provided complete protection. So impressed were the Indians that their chief offered to return the stolen horse to Sir John without further engagement if Sir John would allow him to try out the helmet. Sir John took off the helmet and allowed the raider to try it on, then taking the tomahawk he struck hard at the man’s head. Because the helmet was too small to fit properly on the Indian, Sir John’s powerful arms and shoulders delivered a pounding that almost popped out the Indian’s eyes and caused the helmet to badly scrape his head just above the ears. Thinking Sir John some sort of white medicine man because he had not been hurt while wearing the helmet though their chief was, they were more than glad to honor their promise of giving him back his horse.

When his barn was set afire one time and his sawmill another, Sir John donned his armour again and went out after the raiders. When they saw the man of steel coming after them so fearlessly though he was so greatly outnumbered, they thought him a spirit from another world and sped away. Native American raids during King Philip’s War in 1676 (details of which are in the next chapter) were, however, so extensively violent that Sir John and his wife were forced to leave Lancaster along with every single one of his townsmen and their families. It would be years before the Prescotts returned.

Of his wife, Mary, little has been learned except that she had been born in Halifax Parish, Yorkshire, in 1606. Considering her loyalty to her husband, the way she followed him across an ocean to the New Land, bore him seven or eight children, helped him fight off Indians attacking their homestead during King Philip’s War, she was an incredible woman. In her seventy-five years, she was indicative of the hearty, dedicated colonial women of her time. A careful and caring woman all her life, good wife and mother always, and a responsible neighbor, she was also much like most women married or born into the Prescott family throughout colonial history and the early days of the new nation.

Though there are no details about Mary’s life and only scant mention of her name in the annals of Lancaster, women in those days shared many of the same roles and challenges in life. Most became wives and mothers and, therefore, had a unique bond from experiencing the joys, heartbreaks, burdens, and challenges of marriage and motherhood. They cared for their husbands and children and assisted neighbors in times of need; they saw to church and social affairs; they were tailors, gardeners, chefs, educators of the family, nurses, midwives, and advisors. For them there were never any special certificates, trophies, plaques, or even the privilege of education. Rarely even a special mention in history!

Mary had made the best of what little she had. She furnished her house from lumber John had cut and carved into chairs, beds, pantry, and tables. She had nothing like the closets we are used to today but instead made the best of simple cupboards. She kept clothes on wooden hooks or pegs lined along the walls, and there was little chance for privacy; parents and children usually slept within range of the fireplace. As that fireplace usually had an oven built into the side of it, Mary spent a great deal of time around it; and because it was no easy task to either light the fireplace or keep it going, she invested a good amount of time attending to it. She also worked outside—boiling water, melting lard, carrying water from wells or streams, and gardening. She would spin and weave, dust and scrub.

She learned to design and make whatever home crafts she needed or wanted and probably made almost all of the clothes her family wore. The children’s wardrobes depended much on hand-me-downs. Her life softened some as the children matured enough to help out, and especially when they came of age and moved away.

But her life was never easy.

CHAPTER 2

Heritage: 1643-1751

While the Puritan ethic supported the foundations of Massachusetts culture, Sir John found that this was no guarantee there would not be social and political tensions throughout the colony. If he did not realize it before, he certainly did now that people may find comfort in the same theology or way of worship and yet be extremely diverse in terms of how they wanted their communities managed. Until shortly after Sir John’s second son was born, Massachusetts’ government was made up of two legislative bodies, the assistants and the deputies. With the escalating conflict between religious tradition and political necessity, tensions flared and the court soon become divided. When Sir John read or heard of the expulsion of once-influential members of the colony because of their disregard for certain religious traditions or perspectives, he must have wondered if Massachusetts were not becoming the England he had left. These so-called expulsions on the grounds of religious principles were far more politically than religiously motivated; the underlying issues were the legality of land titles and boundary lines and whether there was more to lose or gain in attempting to drive the Indians from their lands.

CAPTAIN JONATHAN PRESCOTT

Jonathan Prescott (1643-December 5, 1721) was the seventh child and second of the three sons of Sir John and Mary Prescott. Jonathan (known as Captain Jonathan in his adult years because of his rank in the militia) remained in Lancaster during his early adult years. There he became involved in numerous business dealings before moving to Concord where he served in the Concord General Assembly from 1692-99 and again from 1712-13.¹

At age twenty-seven, Jonathan had married a young woman from Watertown, Massachusetts, named Dorothy; and they settled there briefly. Jonathan had been born in Watertown where his parents, Sir John and Mary, lived for a brief time before settling in Lancaster. Though Dorothy’s family heritage is unknown, it appears she was twenty-four at the time of their marriage on August 3, 1670.

The first two years of marriage were filled with heartbreak, and the fifth year additionally so for him. Their first child died on birth, May 2, 1671; and a second child, Jonathan, Jr., died on May 4, 1672, less than one month after he was born. Then in 1674 or early 1675, Dorothy passed away—just