Each member of the family had a house, barns, orchards, gardens, meadows, upland, and woodland; and the homestead of the old patriarch was in the midst of them, the enterprise of his laborious life crowned with complete success.  The innumerable family of the name, scattered all over the country, has largely, if not wholly, been derived from this source.  Bray Wilkins, and the members of his household in all its branches, were always on hand at parish meetings in Salem Village.  Over a distance, as their route must have been, of five miles, they came, in all seasons and all weathers, by the roughest roads, and, in the earlier period, where there were no roads at all, through the woods, fording streams, to meeting on the Lord’s Day.  He continued vigorous, hale, and active to the last; and died, as he truly characterizes himself in his will, “an ancient,” Jan. 1, 1702, at the age of ninety-two.

This was the way in which the large grants made to wealthy and eminent persons, governors, deputy-governors, and assistants, came into the possession and under the productive labor of a yeomanry who made good their title to the soil by the force of their characters and the strength of their muscles.  One of the terms of Wilkins’s purchase was, that, if he found and wrought minerals on the land, he was to pay to Bellingham or his heirs a royalty of ten pounds per annum.  Believing that the best mine to be found in land is the crops that can be raised from it, he never tried to find any other.

Bray Wilkins will appear to have shared in the witchcraft delusion, and been very unhappily connected with it; but he lived to behold its termination, and to participate in the restoration of reason.  The minister of the parish at the time of his death, the Rev. Joseph Green, kept a diary which has been preserved.  He thus speaks of the old man:  “He lived to a good old age, and saw his children’s children, and their children, and peace upon our little Israel.”

It is rather curious to notice such indications as the mineral clause in Wilkins’s deed affords of the prevalent expectation, at the beginning of settlements in this region, that valuable minerals would be found in it.  What makes it worthy of particular inquiry is, that they were found and wrought for some time, but that no one thinks of looking after them now.  Simon Bradstreet, Daniel Dennison, and John Putnam put up and carried on together, upon a large scale, iron-works, in 1674, at Rowley Village, now Boxford.  Samuel and Nathan Leonard were employed to construct them, and carried them on by contract.  These iron-works were long regarded as a promising enterprise and valuable investment.  The Leonards were probably of the same family that, at Raynham and the neighborhood, engaged in this business to a great extent, and for a long period, making it a source of wealth and the foundation of eminent families.  We know that the business was carried on extensively in Lynn, and that Governor Endicott was quite sure that he had found copper on his Orchard Farm.  Who knows but that modern science and more searching methods of detection may yet discover the hidden treasures of which the fathers caught a glimpse, and their enterprises be revived and conducted with permanent energy and success?