Phineas Pratt

[2] Pratt arrived as part of the company of Thomas Weston on the 1622 voyage of the ship Sparrow and was among the founders of the Wessagusset (Weymouth) settlement which failed in March 1623.

In 1662, he wrote an account of the early days of the Wessagusett colony as part of a petition to the General Court of Massachusetts for "First Comer" status, which he was granted.

Poorly supplied, with inferior provisions and with many ill, Weston's total company comprised approximately 67 men, about ten of whom sailed on the Sparrow and (through some mis-navigation) put ashore in Damarill's Cove (Damariscove Islands), off the now State of Maine,[4] to find a site for another plantation.

[5] Eventually, the group sailed to Plymouth to await the arrival of the Charity and Swan, and the Pilgrims supported them throughout the summer of 1622.

In August, after the arrival of the Swan, the merchant's company built a trading post stockade in the abandoned native settlement of Wessaguscus, now Weymouth, Massachusetts, under the leadership of Weston's brother-in-law: Richard Greene.

"[3] In his memoir of travels to the colony, Christopher Levett complains of company members, "They neither applied themselves to planting of corn, nor taking of fish, more than their present use, but went about to build castles in the aire, and making of forts, neglecting the plentiful time of fishing; when winter came, their forts would not keep out hunger, and they having no provision beforehand, and wanting both powder and shot to kill deer and fowl, many starved to death and the rest hardly escaped."

(In their defense, Eleazer Pratt mentions that the company had settled their colony too late to plant food for the winter.

According to Eleazer Pratt's narrative, "The half-starved company of Weston had some among their number who could not resist the temptation of stealing and eating the inviting grain.

Shortly thereafter, in March 1623, Massasoit, who was then sachem of the Wampanoags, informed the Plymouth colonists that there was a conspiracy among the natives of the Wessagusset area to massacre the Weston men.

Just as Myles Standish was about to set out to rescue Weston's men on March 24, Phineas Pratt arrived in Plymouth "from the Massachusetts with a small pack at his back.

Phineas Pratt and others joined the Plymouth settlement, where they were received with mixed feelings, and later listed as if they were passengers of the Anne.

[3] Degory Priest had left his wife and daughters Mary and Sarah behind in Leiden, intending to return for them, but died during the difficult first winter of the settlement.

His widow married again in Holland (her third marriage) to Cuthbert Cuthbertson (aka Godbert Godbertson), and arrived with her daughters and baby son on the ship Anne, in 1623.

[3] To support this claim, Pratt submitted an extraordinary narrative of his early days in the settlement titled A declaration of the affaires of the Einglish People, that first inhabited New Eingland.

[10] In response, the court granted him three hundred acres of land "laid out in the wilderness on the east of the Merrimack River, near the upper end of the 'Nacoke Brooke'."

Yet my necessity causeth me farther to entreat you to consider what my service hath been unto my dread Soveraign Lord King James of famous memory.

According to the records of the Pilgrim Hall Museum, the text is as follows:I, Phinias Pratt of Charlstown in the Countie of Midellsex Joyner being very aged and Crazye of body yett in my pfect memory and understanding doe make This my last will and Teastamoen.

Wthout molestation or trubl; but If my sonn Joseph doeth not perform this will that then my wif Mary Prat shall have the one half of the land to hir Dispossing for his vest comfort: it is to be understod that the one half wch the new hous standeth one is given to Joseph upon the condistion of providing of a convenient room for me and my wife for term of our lives and this other half for the paying of the fortie Shillings a year paying it quartterly that is to say ten shllig a quarter in mony and fier wood at mony price and If ther be any thing left at the death of my wife it shalbe equally devided a mung all my children.