164 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



bert's Lane towards the west, was not named after Cor- 

 nelius Canterbury, for he had been dead more than a 

 century before that street was made. 



One of his lots fronted upon the Steep Rocks near the 

 estate of the present Edward Wheelwright ; another was 

 a strip in the First Division about halfway between Pond 

 Street and Beechwood Street. His lot in the Beechwood 

 district was about five hundred feet southwest of the 

 pond. His house might have been upon any of these, or 

 it might have been upon some little patch of land bought 

 of some other grantee where he plied his trade of bucket 

 and barrel making. At his death he had about four dollars' 

 worth of barrels and other cooper stock on hand. 



But perhaps the most interesting item of the inventory 

 is the " one year's time in an Indian servant." It may 

 have been a Quonahassit Indian whose parents had seen 

 John Smith sixty-nine years before. Or perhaps he was 

 sold a slave, as many other Indians were sold at the cap- 

 ture of them in the King Philip War of 1675. 



His owner might have leased him to Cornelius Canter- 

 bury, so that one year was left when Canterbury died 

 before the Indian's time was worked out. Several of the 

 Cohasset settlers had Indian servants, both male and 

 female, to work upon farms or in homes, and here is the 

 earliest on record. 



The item of " leather and deerskins " suggests that the 

 wild deer was not then exterminated, but roamed our 

 forests and made profitable hunting for the settlers. 

 Nearly a century later than this, in the year 1754, a "deer 

 reaver," * Jonathan Pratt, was annually appointed by the 

 town. The "two guns" of the inventory, if not the old 

 matchlock variety, were at least the clumsy flintlocks, 

 which were persuaded to go off when they were amiable, 

 by a spark struck from the steel pan at the side of the 



*Scituate appointed men in 1784 for the preservation and increase of deer, 

 (Deane's History of Scituate, p. iii.) 



