whole estate to his widow, "her heirs and assigns for ever." His will
is dated Jan. 27, 1668, and was offered to Probate on the 29th of
February, 1668. His widow married, Aug. 31, 1668, the Rev. James
Allen, one of the ministers of the First Church in Boston, whose
previous wife, Hannah Dummer, by whom he received five hundred acres
of land, had died in March, 1668. His Endicott wife died April 5,
1673, leaving the Townsend-Bishop farm and all her other property to
him; and on the 11th of September, of the same year, he married Sarah
Hawlins. By his two preceding wives he received twelve hundred acres
of land. How much he got by the last-mentioned, we have no
information. Besides these matrimonial accumulations, the accounts
seem to indicate that he was rich before.

It may well be imagined, that it could not have been very agreeable to
the family at the Orchard Farm to see this choice and extensive
portion of their estate, which was within full view from their
windows, swept into the hands of utter strangers in so rapid and
extraordinary a manner, by a series of circumstances most distasteful
and provoking. But this was but the beginning of their trouble.

On the 29th of April, 1678, Allen sold the Bishop farm to Francis
Nurse, of the town of Salem, for four hundred pounds. Nurse was an
early settler, and, before this purchase, had lived, for some forty
years, "near Skerry's," on the North River, between the main part of
the settlement in the town of Salem and the ferry to Beverly. He is
described as a "tray-maker." The making of these articles, and similar
objects of domestic use, was an important employment in a new country
remote from foreign supply. He appears to have been a very respectable
person, of great stability and energy of character, whose judgment was
much relied on by his neighbors. No one is mentioned more frequently