THOMAS WILDER
THOMAS SAWYER
RALPH HOUGHTON

Monday, the seventeenth of February, 1659, "the Company granted him to
fall pines on the Com'ons to supply his saw-mill."

In April 1659, Ensign Noyes came to make accurate survey of the eighty
square miles granted to the town, and John Prescott was deputed by the
townsmen at their March meeting to aid in the survey and "mark the
bounds." Among his varied accomplishments, natural and acquired,
Prescott seems to have had some practical skill in surveying, the laying
out of highways and the construction of bridges. In 1648 John Winthrop
records: "This year a new way was found out to Connecticut by Nashua
which avoided much of the hilly way." As appears by a later petition
Prescott was the pioneer of this new path. In 1657 he was appointed by
the government a member of a committee upon the building of bridges "at
Billirriky and Misticke." In 1658 he with his son-in-law Jonas Fairbank
was appointed to survey a farm of six hundred and fifty acres for
Captain Richard Davenport, upon which farm the chief part of West
Boylston now stands.

To the General Court which met October 18, 1659, the following petition
was presented:

"The humble petition of John Prescot of Lancaster humblye Sheweth,
That whereas yr petitioner about nine or ten yeares since, was
desired by the late hon'red Governour Mr. Winthrop, w'th other
Magistrates, as also by Mr. Wilson of Boston, Mr. Shephard of