time of floods impassable. Between 1759 and 1761, the proceeds of
special lotteries amounting to twelve hundred and twenty seven pounds
were expended in the improvement of the crossing.

John Winthrop, writing of the Nashaway planters, tells us that "he whom
they had called to be their minister, [Norcross] left them for their
delays," but omits mention of the fact recorded by the planters
themselves in their petition, that the chief and sufficient cause of
their slow progress was in the inability or unwillingness of the
Governor and magistrates to afford effective aid in providing a passable
crossing over a small river.

Prescott, at least, was chargeable with no delay. By June 1645, he and
his family had become permanent residents on the Nashaway. Richard
Linton, Lawrence Waters the carpenter, and John Ball the tailor, were
his only neighbors; these three men having been sent up to build, plant,
and prepare for the coming of other proprietors. But two houses had been
built. Linton probably lived with his son-in-law Waters, in his home
near the fording place in the North Branch of the Nashaway, contiguous
to the lot of intervale land which Harmon Garrett and others of the
first proprietors had fenced in to serve as a "night pasture" for their
cattle. Ball had left his children and their mother in Watertown; she
being at times insane. Prescott's first lot embraced part of the grounds
upon which the public buildings in Lancaster now stand, but this he soon
parted with, and took up his abode a mile to the south west, on the
sunny slope of George Hill, where, beside a little brooklet of pure cool
water, which then doubtless came rollicking down over its gravelly bed
with twice the flow it has to-day, there had been built, two years at
least before, the trucking house of Symonds & King. This trading post
was the extreme outpost of civilization; beyond was interminable forest,