THE FIRST HOMES. I75 



it was quite beyond his needs until his family had in- 

 creased. 



His third son, Aaron, was a boy twelve years old at 

 about the time Mordecai Lincoln built the sawmill on 

 Bound Brook, but he grew straightway into a veritable 

 second edition of his energetic father, so that he owned 

 not only mills, but real estate and merchandise to a 

 remarkable amount. A pair of balances for weighing 

 sold and silver has come into the town's collection of his- 

 torical relics from these two Aarons, and the tradition of 

 their service in weighing precious metals before the days 

 of coining attest the business success achieved by these 

 first generations of the Pratt family. 



It may not be out of place to refer here to a son of this 

 first home who gained a public eminence unsurpassed as a 

 jurist in the New England colonies, and afterwards as the 

 colonial Chief Justice of New York. It was Benjamin 

 Pratt, the fourteenth child of Aaron. 



In early youth he was apprenticed to a mechanic. 

 When about nineteen years of age he fell from a tree and 

 injured his leg severely, so that it had to be amputated. 

 He became a student at Harvard College, placed at the 

 foot of the list because of the lowly social position of his 

 family ; but before he died his career had carried him so 

 high as an astute legal authority that the highest Harvard 

 distinction was accorded to him. 



But the brilliant career of this Cohasset cripple came 

 too late for his father Aaron to witness. Twenty-five 

 years before the appointment of Chief Justice Benjamin 

 Pratt, the hard-working father had gone to his long rest. 

 The inventory of his personal property given below may 

 stand for the wealthiest of the first homes, though it was 

 taken a generation later than those already given : — 



£ s. d. 



Wearing apparel 43^-. Cash ^w- beds & 



bedding ;^2 3. ws. Linen 6 6^- 40. 00. 00 



