wrote it down at the time. The statement is confirmed by the report of a
committee on the petition of Josiah Sartell, made to the House of
Representatives, on June 13, 1771. Willard's farm, however, was not laid
out before the original plantation was granted, but in the spring of
1658, three years after the grant. At this time Danforth had not made
his plan of the plantation, which fact may have given rise to the
misapprehension. Ralph Reed was one of the original proprietors of the
town, and owned a fifteen-acre right; but I do not find that any land
was granted him by the General Court.

It has been incorrectly supposed, and more than once so stated in print,
that the gore of land, petitioned for by Benjamin Prescott, lay in the
territory now belonging to Pepperell; but this is a mistake. The only
unappropriated land between Dunstable and Townsend, as asked for in the
petition, lay in the angle made by the western boundary of Dunstable and
the northern boundary of Townsend. At that period Dunstable was a very
large township, and included within its territory several modern towns,
lying mostly in New Hampshire. The manuscript records of the General
Court define very clearly the lines of the gore, and leave no doubt in
regard to it. It lay within the present towns of Mason, Brookline,
Wilton, Milford, and Greenville, New Hampshire. Benjamin Prescott was at
the time a member of the General Court and the most influential man in
town. His petition was presented to the House of Representatives on
November 28, 1734, and referred to a committee, which made a report
thereon a fortnight later. They are as follows:--

A Petition of _Benjamin Prescot_, Esq; Representative of the Town
of _Groton_, and in behalf of the Proprietors of the said Town,
shewing that the General Court in _May_ 1655, in answer to the
Petition of Mr. _Dean Winthrop_ and others, were pleased to grant