I30 NATURAL HISTORY AND TOPOGRAPHY OF GROTON, MASS. 



made at the session of the General Court beginning May 27, 

 1663, and duly approved by that body. 



Through the signature of Abigail Flint, the deed furnishes 

 the given name of Thomas's widow. John, the son, married 

 Mary, the daughter of Urian Oakes, the President of Harvard 

 College; and their signatures, also, are attached to the docu- 

 ment. The grantee was afterward known as Captain Thomas 

 Wheeler, the famous Indian fighter, who wrote a " Narrative " 

 of his campaign against the savages. 



JAMES'S BROOK. 



Mr. Butler, in his History (p. 244), says that James's 

 Brook took its name from Captain James Parker, a large land- 

 owner along the banks of the stream. His ownership, how- 

 ever, was near the upper part of the brook, and did not extend 

 to any great distance below. During the last seventy-five years 

 this explanation of the name has been generally received, and 

 before that period but little thought was given to the subject. 

 Recently my attention has been called to a different view of 

 the question by the late Honorable Claudius Buchanan Farns- 

 worth, of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, who was a native of Groton. 

 Mr. Farnsworth belonged to a family that had lived for more 

 than two centuries in the immediate neighborhood of the 

 brook, and he was himself very familiar with the locality and 

 the traditions of the place. Under the date of September 3, 

 1888, he writes: — 



When a boy, living near the brook and crossing it very often, I 

 used to hear people say that it was so called after an Indian, named 

 "Jeems," who fished along its banks and finally was found dead in 

 the vicinity. In my boyhood that was the popular talk, and I have 

 heard it many times over. It is called "James his P>roke " in the 

 town-records, November 27, 1664, when things could haidly have 

 got so settled that common usage would have given to the brook 

 the Christian name of a proprietor living near by. 



