Edward Bishop, the eldest of his sons, married Susanna, daughter of John Putnam, and in 1713 removed to that part of Ipswich now Hamilton.  Prior to 1695, these four Edward Bishops were all living; and the youngest had a wife and children.  All will be found connected with our story, the second and third prominently.  The fourth owed his safety, perhaps, to the influential connections of his wife.

The first notice we have of Bray Wilkins is in the Massachusetts colonial records, Sept. 6, 1638, when he was authorized to set up a house and keep a ferry at Neponset River, and have “a penny a person.”  On the 5th of November, 1639, the General Court accepted a report made by William Hathorne and Richard Davenport, commissioners appointed for the purpose, and, in accordance therewith, laid out a farm for Richard Bellingham, who had been deputy-governor, was then an assistant, and afterwards governor, “on the head of Salem, to the north-west of the town; there being in it a hill, and an Indian plantation, and a pond.”  This nice little farm included seven hundred acres, and “about one hundred or one hundred and fifty acres of meadow” beside.  The next thing we hear about the matter is a petition to the General Court, May 22, 1661, of “Bray Wilkins and John Gingle, humbly desiring that the farm called by the name of Will’s Hill, which this Court granted to the worshipful Richard Bellingham, Esq., and they purchased of him, may be laid to, and appointed to belong to, Salem; being nigh its lands, and the petitioners of its society.”  The Court granted the request.  It seems that, about a year before, on the 9th of March, “Bray Wilkins, husbandman, and John Gingle, tailor, both of Lynn,” had bought the Bellingham farm for two hundred and fifty pounds, of which they paid at the time twenty-five pounds, and mortgaged it back for the residue.  The twenty-five pounds was paid as follows:  twenty-four pounds in a ton of bar-iron, and one pound in money.  Wilkins had, some time before, removed from Neponset, and perhaps had been working in one of the iron-manufactories then in operation at Lynn.  When the balance of his wages over his expenses enabled him, with the aid of Gingle, to raise a ton of iron and scrape together twenty shillings, they entered upon their bold undertaking.  He had not a dollar in his pocket; but he had what was better than dollars,—­industrious habits, a resolute will, a strong constitution, an iron frame, and six stout sons.  After a while, he took into the work, in addition to his own effective family force, two trusty kinsmen, Aaron Way and William Ireland, conveying to them good farms out of his seven hundred acres.  He enlarged his farm, from time to time, by new purchases, so as to more than make up for what he sold to Way and Ireland.  In 1676 the mortgage was fully discharged.  He and his sons bought out the heirs of Gingle, and the work was done.  They held, free from debt, in one tract, a territory about two miles in length on the Reading line.