shelter
from the charity of strangers. For more than three years his enforced
banishment endured. In October 1679, John Prescott with his sons John
and Jonathan, his sons-in-law Thomas Sawyer and John Rugg, his grand-son
Thomas Sawyer, Jr. and his neighbor's John Moore, Thomas Wilder, and
Josiah White, petitioned the Middlesex Court for permission to resettle
the town, and their prayer was granted. Soon most of the inhabitants who
had survived the massacre and exile, were busily building new homes,
some upon the cinders of the old, others upon their second division
lands east of the rivers where they were less exposed to the stealthy
incursions of their savage enemies. The two John Prescotts rebuilt the
mills and dwelt there. Whether the pioneer's life long helpmate died
before their settlement, in exile, or shortly after the return, has not
been ascertained, but it would seem that he survived her. Jonathan
having married a second wife remained in Concord. For two years the old
man lived with his eldest son, seeing the Nashaway Valley blooming with
the fruits of civilized labor; seeing new families filling the woeful
gaps made in the old by Philip's warriors; seeing children and
grandchildren grasping the implements that had fallen from the nerveless
hold of the earliest bread-winners, with hopeful and pertinacious
purpose to extend the paternal domain; seeing too, may we not trust,
from the Pisgah height of prophetic vision the glorious promise awaiting
this his Canaan; these softly rounded hills and broad valleys dotted
with the winsome homes of thousands of freemen; churches and schools,
shops of artisans, and busy marts of trade clustered about his mill
site; and, above all, seeing the assertion of political freedom and
liberty of conscience which Governor John Winthrop had reproached him
for favoring in the petition of Robert Child, become the corner stone of
a giant republic.

No record of John Prescott's death is found; but when upon his death
bed, feeling that the changed condition of his own and his son
Jonathan's affairs required some modification of the will made in 1673,
he summoned two of his townsmen to hear his nuncupative codicil to that
document. From the affidavit, here appended, it is certain that his
death occurred about the middle of December, 1681.

"The Deposition of Thos: Wilder aged 37 years sworn say'th that
being with Jno: Prescott Sen'r About six hours before he died he ye
s'