are numerous, and have occupied distinguished stations, often exhibiting a transmitted military stamp.  Joseph Herrick was in the Narragansett fight.  It illustrates the state of things at that time, that this eminent citizen, a large landholder, engaged in prosperous mercantile affairs, and who had been abroad, was, in 1692, when forty-seven years of age, a corporal in the village company.  He was the acting constable of the place, and, as such, concerned in the early proceedings connected with the witchcraft prosecutions.  For a while he was under the influence of the delusion; but his strong and enlightened mind soon led him out of it.  He was one of the petitioners in behalf of an accused person, when intercession, by any for any, was highly dangerous; and he was a leader in the party that rose against the fanaticism, and vindicated the characters of its victims.  He inherited a repugnance to oppression, and sympathy for the persecuted.  His father and mother appear, by a record of Court, to have been fined “for aiding and comforting an excommunicated person, contrary to order.”

William Nichols, in 1651, bought two hundred acres, which had been granted to Henry Bartholomew, partly in the village, but mostly beyond the “six-mile extent,” and consequently set off to Topsfield.  He had several other lots of land.  He distributed nearly all his real estate, during his lifetime, to his son John; his adopted son, Isaac Burton; his daughters, the wives of Thomas Wilkins and Thomas Cave; and his grand-daughter, the wife of Humphrey Case.  His only son John had several sons, and from them the name has been widely dispersed.  In a deposition dated May 14, 1694, William Nichols declares himself “aged upwards of one hundred years.”  As his will was offered for Probate Feb. 24, 1696, he must have been one hundred and two years of age at his death.

William Cantlebury was a large landholder, having purchased three-quarters of the Corwin grant.  He died June 1, 1663.  His name died with him, as he had no male issue.  His property went to his daughters, who were represented, in 1692, under the names of Small, Sibley, and Buxton.  The Flints, Popes, Uptons, Princes, Phillipses, Needhams, and Walcotts, had valuable farms, and appear, from the records and documents, to have been respectable, energetic, and intelligent people.  Daniel Andrew was one of the strong men of the village; had been a deputy to the General Court, and acted a prominent part before and after the witchcraft convulsion.  But the great family of the village—­greater in numbers and in aggregate wealth than any other, and eminently conspicuous on both sides in the witchcraft proceedings—­remains to be mentioned.

John Putnam had a grant of one hundred acres, Jan. 20, 1641.  With his wife Priscilla, he came from Buckinghamshire, England, and was probably about fifty years of age on his arrival in this country.  He was a man of great energy and industry, and acquired a large estate.  He died in 1662, leaving three sons,—­Thomas, born in 1616; Nathaniel, in 1620; and John, in 1628.  For a more convenient classification, I shall, in speaking of this family, refer, not to the original John at all, but to the sons as its three heads.