[General Court Records (x, 216), February 11, 1717, in the office of the secretary of state.]

The proprietors of Groton felt sore at the loss of their territory along the Nashobah line in the year 1714, although it would seem without reason.  They had neglected to have the plan of their grant confirmed by the proper authorities at the proper time; and no one was to blame for this oversight but themselves.  In the autumn of 1734 they represented to the General Court that in the laying out of the original plantation no allowance had been made for prior grants in the same territory, and that in settling the line with Littleton they had lost more than four thousand acres of land; and in consideration of these facts they petitioned for an unappropriated gore of land lying between Dunstable and Townsend.

The necessary steps for bringing the matter before the General Court at this time were taken at a town meeting, held on July 25, 1734.  It was then stated that the town had lost more than twenty-seven hundred and eighty-eight acres by the encroachment of Littleton line; and that two farms had been laid out within the plantation before it was granted to the proprietors.  Under these circumstances Benjamin Prescott was authorized to present the petition to the General Court, setting forth the true state of the case and all the facts connected with it.  The two farms alluded to were Major Simon Willard’s, situated at Nonacoicus or Coicus, now within the limits of Ayer, and Ralph Reed’s, in the neighborhood of the Ridges; so Mr. Butler told me several years before his death, giving Judge James Prescott as his authority, and I carefully 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:—­