THE

EARLY RECORDS OF LANCASTER

MASSACHUSETTS.

1643-1725.

EDITED BY

HENRY S. NOURSE, A. M.

The Comisioners apoynted by the genrall Court to order and setle the afaires of Lancaster
being asembled at John Prescots' house September ye eight 1657. doe Judge meet to order and
Conclud as followeth .
Alsoe that the Select men tak spesiall care for the preseruing and
safe keeping the townes Records. And If they se it need full, that they procure the same to be
writen out fairly into a new booke, to be keept for the good of posterity.-Lancaster Records.

.....

LANCASTER:

1884.

CLINTON:

PRINTED BY W. J. COULTER, COURANT OFFICE.

1884.

MAPS DRAWN BY HAROLD PARKER.

97443
L2Ze
2005

NOTE BY THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLICATION.

AT the adjourned March meeting of the town of Lancaster, 1883, it was voted "to appropriate five hundred dollars for publishing some of our earliest town records under the direction of the Library Committee; to be prepared by Henry S. Nourse."

The committee thus authorized to oversee the publication now presented to the town, must not omit to testify here to their conviction of the eminent ability and fidelity with which their associate has completed his task, and of the greatness of the debt under which the town has been brought to him by this, as well as by other labors in the same field. They have found that their duty, as aside from his, has devolved upon them little more than a careful reading of his manuscript; while the toil, the care, and the zeal which the matter in hand demanded, and that have been spent upon it, have been expended by him:

"And all for love, and nothing for reward."

It may not be useless for them to remind the town of some of the reasons that gave rise to the resolution under which they were appointed. Among these were the risk of destruction by fire; the wasting material of the originals; the desirableness of supplying imperfections, as far as possible, from other sources; clearing up obscurities by intelligent annotation; and such a multiplication of copies as it may reasonably be hoped and expected will be called for.

They have understood, however, that the work was to be undertaken primarily, not in the interest of the historiographer, but for the use of the town; for its more familiar acquaintance with, and its surer preservation of, its own annals. It is from this consideration that the editor has added some notes which he would otherwise have withheld. Nevertheless they are well aware that these " Early Records” are not confined for edification to their own townsmen; and that any intelligent person of New England birth may not only behold, as with " ancestral eyes," therein "the doings that are described, but, more or less, the causes also which, from without For within, gave the current of events this or that direction; and see, as in a mirror, the operation of the forces that in this country "developed local self government, and furnish the basis of our political history."

It gives the committee pleasure, as well for the name as the convenience of so doing, to consign the printing of this book to a local press.

LANCASTER, March, 1884.

Stx

INTRODUCTION.

FROM

the year 1726 the records of Lancaster become continuous, are complete, and in good condition. All before that date is fragmentary. The earliest existing volume opens with A. D. 1653, in which year the Nashaway Plantation was formally given the classic name it now bears. The earlier pages of that book, however, are a copy, made about 1657, of the first records. Of "the old book," often referred to therein, no leaf remains, and many pages of the transcript have disappeared, while others are badly worn and almost illegible. During the first seventyfive years of the town's life, the inhabitants nearly all held proprietary rights in the common lands; and we find the clerks recording indiscriminately, often upon the same pages, action of the freemen as electors, of the proprietors dividing their landed estate, and of the people directing local improvement and church administration. After the settlement of Rev. John Prentice in 1708, special church records begin, and a register of births, marriages and deaths dates from about 1718, in which a few earlier dates have been casually inserted. This register is exceedingly imperfect. The earliest recorded meeting of the proprietors, as distinct from the town-meeting proper, was Feb. 4, 1716, statute provision having been made for such meetings March 25, 1713. The doings of regular town-meetings continued, however, to be recorded with proprietary action until 1726, when a new book was opened for the former. The proprietors used the old volume until 1810, about which time the proprietors' clerk made a careless copy of the whole, by which we know that the records