164 NATURAL HISTORY AND TOPOGRAPHY OF GROTON, MASS. 



are those of his grandson Dr. Oliver Prescott. S. J. Park 

 was Stuart James Park, the great-grandfather of Mr. Lawrence 

 Park, who now owns the adjacent land. 



Jonas Prescott was an active man in the affairs of the town, 

 and the ancestor of a long line of distinguished families. He 

 was the grandfather of Colonel William Prescott, commander 

 of the American forces at the Battle of Bunker Hill, who was 

 himself the father of William Prescott the lawyer and jurist, and 

 the grandfather of William Hickling Prescott the historian. 



In the year 1876 this piece of stone wall containing the 

 boulder and separating a part of the Prescott house-lot from 

 the highway was removed. Three years after it was taken 

 away, I endeavored to find the stone, then to all intents and 

 purposes lost; and it was a long while before I got any trace 

 of it. The late Willard H. Giles, at that time the owner of the 

 farm, knew nothing about it, and in fact had never seen it. I 

 was told, however, that it might have been used in stoning up 

 the cellar of a barn built in 1876, and here I directed my 

 search. With Mr. Giles's permission I employed two men 

 for two days to take out and replace various stones, until the 

 missing one was found. Subsequently I gave the memorial to 

 Mr. James Lawrence, a lineal descendant of Jonas Prescott, who 

 has had it set in the wall on the north side of his front gate on 

 Farmers' Row, where it is likely to remain for many years. 



It may not be amiss to give here the derivation of the word 

 " mile," which comes from the Latin mille. With the Romans 

 a mile was a thousand steps, or paces {inille passimni) ; and 

 thus the word has come down to us in our daily speech. 



INSTANCES OF LONGEVITY. 



Mrs. Sarah C. Rock wood. 



While travelling homeward, through the state of New 

 York, from a recent trip to the Southwest, I left the cars at 

 Syracuse, on Thanksgiving Day (November 28), with the 



