250 HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



the iron works had long been abandoned, and the sawmill, 

 under the management of Aaron Pratt the second, made 

 lumber for many Cohasset dwellings and vessels. It is 

 said that this Aaron Pratt was almost a banker for many 

 Cohasset homes, because his lumber deals made so many 

 housebuilders his debtors. Another half of a sawmill was 

 taxed in the year 1737 to Joseph Hudson, who lived on 

 Jerusalem Road near Straits Pond. He owned further- 

 more three sixteenths of the corn mill that was then stand- 

 ing at the outlet of Straits Pond. Another three six- 

 teenths of this corn mill belonged to Andrew Beal, a 

 Cohasseter. But there was another corn mill at the 

 opposite end of the community, at the mouth of Bound 

 Brook, owned by the sons of Mordecai Lincoln, Jacob and 

 Isaac. Jacob lived in Scituate, but Isaac was a Cohasseter, 

 and dwelt in the old gambrel-roofed house now standing a 

 few hundred feet from Bound Rock on South Main Street. 



All these Cohasset mill owners were adding strength to 

 the community by their product and their profit. 



It may have been during this precinct period that an- 

 other corn mill was started in the woods a half mile 

 beyond King Street, on a stream that flows into Turkey 

 Hill Run. To-day the remains may be seen by an ex- 

 plorer in the woods. The dam is there, a mound of earth 

 heaped up across a narrow valley on both sides of a little 

 brook, and a millstone partly cut lies upturned in a thicket 

 of beech trees about three hundred yards to the northeast 

 of the dam. This half-finished upper stone we have called 

 the Mystery Millstone, for no one living knows anything 

 about its origin or the reason for abandoning it. 



It is even suggested that an Indian attack might have 

 scared away the makers ; but a more credible guess is that 

 this favorable spot for a dam and a suitable flat stone thus 

 near to it might have lured on some industrious Cohas- 

 seter until he saw that the project would not pay. The 

 stone was probably broken off by nature from a round 



