and cleared the beautiful meadows where the old village meeting-house afterwards stood.  He was a vigorous and intelligent agriculturist, and a man of character.  He died in 1681, at eighty years of age, leaving a large and well-improved estate.  His will has this item:  I give “five acres of land to Black Peter, my servant.”  He had given fine farms to his children severally, many years before his death.  His second wife, who survived him, had no children.  He had come by her into possession of a valuable addition to his estate.  After distributing his property, and providing legacies for children and grandchildren, his will left it to the option of his widow to spend the residue of her days either in the family of his son Joseph, or elsewhere; if she should prefer to live elsewhere, then she should receive back, in her own right, all the property she had originally owned; if she continued to live to her death in Joseph’s family, then her property was to go to him and his heirs.  This, I think, shows that he was as sagacious as he was just.

Richard Ingersoll came from Bedfordshire in England in 1629, bringing letters of recommendation from Matthew Cradock to Governor Endicott.  After living awhile in town, a tract of land of eighty acres was granted to him, on the east side of Wooleston River, opposite the site of Danversport, at a place called, after him, Ingersoll’s Point.  He there proceeded to clear and break ground, plant corn, fence in his land, and make other improvements.  He also carried on a fishery.  Subsequently he leased the Townsend Bishop farm, where he lived several years.  He died in 1644.  Not long before his death, he purchased, jointly with his son-in-law Haynes, the Weston grant.  His half of it he bequeathed to his son Nathaniel.  He was evidently a man of real dignity and worth, enjoying the friendship of the best men of his day.  Governor Endicott and Townsend Bishop were with him in his last sickness, and witnesses to his will.  His widow married John Knight of Newbury.  In a legal instrument filed among the papers connected with a case of land title, dated twenty-seven years after her first husband’s death, she expresses in very striking language the tender affection and respect with which she still cherished his memory.

William Haynes married Sarah, daughter of Richard Ingersoll, and occupied his half of the Weston grant.  In company with his brother, Richard Haynes, he had before bought of Townsend Bishop five hundred and forty acres, covering a considerable part of the northern end of the village territory.  They sold one-third part of it to Abraham Page.  Page sold to Simon Bradstreet, and John Porter bought all the three parts from the Hayneses and Bradstreet.  It long constituted a portion of the great landed property of the Porter family.  These facts show that William Haynes was a person of means; and the manner in which he is uniformly spoken of proves that he was regarded with singular respect and esteem.  He died about 1650, and his son Thomas became subsequently a leading man in the village.