A tract of three hundred acres, next eastward of the Downing farm, was granted to Thomas Read.  He became a freeman in 1634, was a member of the Salem Church in 1636, received his grant the same year, and was acknowledged as an inhabitant, May 2, 1637.  The farm is now occupied and owned by the Hon. Richard S. Rogers.  It is a beautiful and commanding situation, and attests the taste of its original proprietor.  Mr. Read seems to have had a passion for military affairs.  In 1636, he was ensign in a regiment composed of men from Saugus, Ipswich, Newbury, and Salem, of which John Endicott was colonel, and John Winthrop, Jr., lieutenant-colonel.  In 1647, he commanded a company.  During the civil wars in England, he was attracted back to his native country.  He commanded a regiment in 1660, and held his place after the Restoration.  He died about 1663.

Our antiquarians were long at a loss to understand a sentence in one of Roger Williams’s letters to John Winthrop, Jr., in which he says, “Sir, you were not long since the son of two noble fathers, Mr. John Winthrop and Mr. Hugh Peters.”  How John Winthrop, Jr., could be a son of Hugh Peters was the puzzle.  Peters was not the father of either of Winthrop’s two wives; and there was nothing in any family records or memorials to justify the notion.  On the contrary, they absolutely precluded it.  By the labors and acumen of the Hon. James Savage and Mr. Charles Deane, of Cambridge, who have no superiors in grappling with such a difficulty, its solution seems, at last, to be reached.  “After long fruitless search,” Mr. Savage has expressed a conviction that Mr. Deane has “acquired the probable explication.”  The clue was thus obtained:  Mr. Savage says, “This approach to explanation is gained from ’the Life and Death of Hugh Peters, by William Yonge, Dr. Med.  London. 1663,’ a very curious and more scarce tract.”  The facts discovered are that Peters taught a free school at Maldon, in Essex; and that a widow lady with children and an estate of two or three hundred pounds a year befriended him.  She was known as “Mistress Read.”  Peters married her.  The second wife of John Winthrop, Jr., was Elizabeth, daughter of Colonel Read, of Essex.  By marrying Mrs. Read, Peters became the step-father of the younger Winthrop’s wife; and, by the usage of that day, he would be called Winthrop’s father.

A few additional particulars, in reference to Peters and our Salem Read, may shed further light on the subject.  While a prisoner in the Tower of London, awaiting the trial which, in a few short days, consigned him to his fate, Peters wrote “A Dying Father’s Last Legacy to an only Child,” and delivered it to his daughter just before his execution.  This is one of the most admirable productions of genius, wisdom, and affection, anywhere to be found.  In it he gives a condensed history of his life, which enables us to settle some questions, which have given rise to conflicting statements, and kept some points