each other and with the old parental home.

Here the venerable couple were living in truly patriarchal style,
occupying the "mansion" of Townsend Bishop, when the witchcraft
delusion occurred. They and their children were all clustered within
the limits of the three-hundred-acre farm. They were one family. The
territory was their own, secured by their united action, and made
commodious, productive, valuable, and beautiful to behold, by their
harmonious, patient, and persevering labor. Each family had a
homestead, and fields and gardens; and children were growing up in
every household. The elder sons and sons-in-law had become men of
influence in the affairs of the church and village. It was a scene of
domestic happiness and prosperity rarely surpassed. The work of life
having been successfully done, it seemed that a peaceful and serene
descent into the vale of years was secured to Francis and Rebecca
Nurse. But far otherwise was the allotment of a dark and inscrutable
providence.

There is some reason to suspect that the prosperity of the Nurses had
awakened envy and jealousy among the neighbors. The very fact that
they were a community of themselves and by themselves, may have
operated prejudicially. To have a man, who, for forty years, had been
known, in the immediate vicinity, as a farmer and mechanic on a small
scale, without any pecuniary means, get possession of such a property,
and spread out his family to such an extent, was inexplicable to all,
and not relished perhaps by some. There seems to have been a
disposition to persist in withholding from him the dignity of a
landholder; and, long after he had distributed his estate among his
descendants, it is mentioned in deeds made by parties that bounded
upon it, as "the farm which Mr. Allen, of Boston, lets to the Nurses."