Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/48

 40 INTRODUCTION

By his will, dated April 22, 1680, and proved October 5, "Serjeant John Randall," who died June 16 of that year, left his youngest son Eleazer to the care of "brother John Kendall," and directed that the two elder sons, Stephen and Samuel, should be apprenticed. Sarah, the second daughter, in 1682, married James Wheeler, and removed with him from Watertown to Stow.

It was seemingly the residence of his sister Sarah in the town of Stow that induced Stephen, the eldest son of " Serjeant John Randall," whose apprenticeship must have expired and who was probably between twenty and twenty-five years of age at the time, to apply in the year 1685 for a grant of land in the same town. It is certain, however, that the small farm granted him by the town in that year was immediately adjacent to his brother-in-law's farm, as proved by the terms of the grant, for a copy of which from the town records I am indebted to the present owner of the place, as follows : —

" It is voted, ordered, and hereby there is given and granted, the loth of March, 1685, unto Stephen Randall of Watertown, thirty acres of upland and swamp land lying between James Wheeler's and Thos. Daby's lotts on ye south side of ye great River of this town. Twenty acres thereof is for an house lott, and the remaining ten acres of ye sd. thirty is granted to him in lieu of meadow ground, provided he pay to ye use of this town his propor- tion due as others for a twenty acre lott, with all charges arising from time to time as others doo for a twenty acre house lott. This land granted is not to hinder any high- way, and sd. Stephen Randall is to attend ye Hon^"^ Com- mittee's orders."

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