and quick-coming events made it impossible for him to return.  At the departure of the British forces for Halifax, he accompanied them.  A letter from Edmund Quincy to his daughter Mrs. Hancock, dated Lancaster, March 26, 1776, contains a reference to him:  ...  “Im sorry for poor Mrs Abel Willard your Sisters near neighbour & Friend.  Shes gone we hear with her husband and Bro and sons to Nova Scotia P’haps in such a situation and under such circumstances of Offense respecting their Wors’r Neighbours as never to be in a political capacity of returning to their Houses unless w’th power & inimical views w’ch God forbid should ever be ye Case.”

In 1778, the act of proscription and banishment included Abel Willard’s name.  His health gave way under accumulated trouble, and he died in England in 1781.

The estates of Abijah and Abel Willard were confiscated.  In the Massachusetts Archives (cliv, 10) is preserved the anxious inquiry of the town authorities respecting the proper disposal of the wealth they abandoned.

     To the Honourable Provincial Congress now holden at Watertown in
     the Proviance of the Massachusetts Bay.

We the subscribers do request and desire that you would be pleased to direct or Inform this proviance in General or the town of Lancaster in Partickeler what is best to be done with the Estates of those men which are Gone from their Estates to General Gage and to whose use they shall Improve them whether for the proviance or the town where s’d Estate is.

    EBENEZER ALLEN,
    CYRUS FAIRBANK,
    SAMLL THURSTON,
      The Selectmen of Lancaster.

    Lancaster June 7 day 1775.

The Provincial Congress placed the property in question in the hands of the selectmen and Committee of Safety to improve, and instructed them to report to future legislatures.  Finally, Cyrus Fairbank is found acting as the local agent for confiscated estates of royalists in Lancaster, and his annual statements are among the archives of the State.  His accounts embrace the estates of “Abijah Willard, Esq., Abel Willard, Esq., Solomon Houghton, Yeoman, and Joseph Moore Gent.”  The final settlement of Abel Willard’s estate, October 26, 1785, netted his creditors but ten shillings, eleven pence to the pound.  The claimants and improvers probably swallowed even the larger estate of Abijah Willard, leaving nothing to the Commonwealth.

Katherine, the wife of Levi Willard, was the sister, and Dorothy, wife of Captain Samuel Ward, the daughter, of Judge John Chandler, “the honest Refugee.”  These estimable and accomplished ladies lived but a stone’s throw apart, and after the death of Levi Willard there came to reside with them an elder brother of Mrs. Ward, one of the most notable personages in Lancaster during the Revolution.  Clark Chandler was a dapper little bachelor about thirty-two years of age, eccentric in person, habits, and dress.