THE FIRST HOMES. I 73 



Daniel Lincoln paced out the rough distance on their 

 mutual visits. 



Besides the Lincoln and the Nichols families there were 

 probably other families fully as early, about whom the 

 records available give no certain data.* The Hingham 

 tax lists for the years under consideration have disappeared 

 from the town's archives, so that many valuable clews have 

 been lost. 



There is one settler, however, of much importance to 

 the development of Cohasset whose residence here as 

 early as Daniel Lincoln's has the strongest probability, 

 though without record. It was Aaron Pratt, whose de- 

 scendants at the present day are to be counted by dozens 

 in the town. 



It is known that this Aaron, the son f of the famous 

 Phineas whose run to Plymouth saved Wessagusset, pur- 

 chased of Joshua Hobart in the year 1683 lot thirty-seven, 

 reaching from the Gulf a mile back into the woods towards 

 Scituate Pond. 



The lot was a large one, over two hundred feet wide, 

 and that part of it on South Main Street which is the 

 home of the present Robert B. Pratt has been kept in the 

 family name for these two hundred and fourteen years. 



Aaron Pratt's first child was born in 1685, and it is 

 probable that this Cohasset property was a home from the 

 year of its purchase. His family of fifteen children gave 

 him sufficient motives for an energetic career of farming. 



His home, according to tradition, J was a house two 



* Thomas Lincoln, Sr., in his will (1688) gave to his son Joseph, Cohasset lands, 

 and directed that they should " be entered on immediately." 



+ The mother of Aaron was Mary Priest, daughter of the Degory Priest who 

 came to Plymouth in the Mayflower and who died January i, 1621. The widow of 

 Degory Priest married a Hollander, Cuthbert Cuthbertson, in Leyden, November 

 13, 1621, and came to tliis country in 1623, with her husband and two daughters, 

 Mary and Sarah Priest. (New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, July, 

 1897. Article by E. S. Atwood.) 



I See Phinehas Pratt and Some of His Descendants, published 1897, Boston 

 by Eleazer F. Pratt. 



