“Whereas John Prescot & others, the inhabitants of Nashaway p’ferd a petition to this Courte desiringe power to recover all common charges of all such as had land there, not residinge w’th them, for answer whereunto this Court, understandinge that the place before mentioned is not fit to make a plantation, (so a ministry to be erected and mayntayned there,) which if the petitioners, before the end of the next session of this Courte, shall not sufficiently make the sey’d place appeare to be capable to answer the ends above mentioned doth order that the p’ties inhabitinge there shalbe called there hence, & suffered to live without the meanes, as they have done no longer.”  This dire threat of the closing sentence may have been simply “sound and fury, signifying nothing,” or Prescott may have been able to prove to the authorities that Nashaway was fit and waiting for its St. John, but found none willing for the service.  In fact, its St. John was then a junior at Harvard College, writing a pasquinade to post upon the Ipswich meeting-house, and Nashaway was “suffered to live without the meanes,” waiting for him until 1654.

John Prescott retained possession of his early home,—­the site of the “trucking house,” which he had purchased of John Cowdall,—­as long as he lived, but did not reside there many years.  No sooner had the plantation attained the dignity of a township under the classic name of Lancaster, than its founder bent all his energies towards those enterprises best calculated to promote the comfort and prosperity of its then inhabitants, and to attract by material advantages, a desirable and permanent immigration.  His practical eye had doubtless long before marked the best site for a mill in all the region round about, and on the slope, scarce a gun shot away, he set up a new home, afterwards well known to friend and savage foe as Prescott’s Garrison.  Those who remain of the generation familiar with this region before the invention of the power loom made such towns as Clinton possible, remember the depression that told where Prescott dug his cellar.  The oldest water mill in New England was scarce twenty years old when Prescott contracted to grind the com of the Nashaway planters.  His “Covenant to build a Corne mill” has been preserved through a copy made by Ralph Houghton, Lancaster’s first Clerk of the Writs, and is as follows: 

“Know all men by these presents that I John Prescott blackssmith, hath Covenanted and bargained with Jno. ffounell of Charlestowne for the building of a Corne mill, within the said Towne of Lanchaster.  This witnesseth that wee the Inhabitants of Lanchaster for his encouragement in so good a worke for the behoofe of our Towne, vpon condition that the said intended worke by him or his assignes be finished, do freely and fully giue, grant, enfeoffe, & confirme vnto the said John Prescott, thirty acres of intervale Land lying on the north riuer, lying north west of Henry Kerly, and ten acres of Land adjoyneing to the