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In 1650 John Prescott found himself the only member of the company resident at Nashaway.
He parted with all rights at Nashaway before many years and finally delved as a journey man at the press he had founded. John Prescott deserted of all his original co-partners was sufficient for the emergency, a host in himself.
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.
One remarkable character of this kind seems, however, to have escaped the vigilance of our modern Doctors of the Mosaic Law. Dr. Robert Child came to this country about the year 1644, and took up his residence in the Massachusetts colony. He was a man of wealth, and owned plantations at Nashaway, now Lancaster, and at Saco, in Maine.
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.
In May 1644, John Winthrop records that "Many of Watertown and other towns joined in a plantation at Nashaway " and Reverend Timothy Harrington in his Century Sermon states that the organization of this company of planters was due to Thomas King.
The inventory of his estate sums but one hundred and fifty-eight pounds, including his house and land in Watertown, his stock in trade, and seventy-three pounds of debts due him from the Indians, John Prescott, and sundry others. King's widow made haste to be consoled, and her second husband, James Cutler, soon appears in the role of a Nashaway proprietor.
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.
Not one of those famous frontiersmen, whose figures stand out so prominently in early American history, was better equipped with the manly qualities that win hero worship in a new country, than was the father of the Nashaway Plantation.
Loaded from his first step with discouragements, that soon appalled every other of the original co-partners in the purchase of Nashaway from Showanon, Prescott alone, tenax propositi, held to his purpose, and death found him at his post. His grave is in the old "burial field" at Lancaster, yet not ten citizens can point it out.
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