certain articles which he gave her in his lifetime. She died in 1739, and administration was taken out in the following February.

Perez Bradford of Milton and William Richmond and Nathaniel Searle of Little Compton were appointed, September 5, 1732, administrators of the estate of their grandfather, John Rogers, late of Barrington deceased, his widow and two daughters refusing to administer.

Partition of his real estate was made, by the record of which these statements as to his family may be verified.

VII. There was a John Rogers in Billerica; and still another in Watertown; but they have been identified, and have not been "confused" with those I have mentioned. I have gone at length into details, because I am in conflict with Deane, Mitchell, Winsor, Davis and others, and therefore felt the necessity of demonstrating my position beyond a reasonable doubt.

I believe all of them have assumed that John Rogers of Marshfield and John Rogers of Duxbury were the same, and Deane gives John of Duxbury, John of Weymouth and John of Scituate as being the same. The truth is that John of Marshfield, John of Duxbury and John of Weymouth were three different men, each of whom made his will, showing that each of them had a son John, and two of them each a grandson John, son of the son John.

Taking their wills and the dates I have given from the colony records, and comparing them, it is absolutely certain that John of Marshfield and his son

John, and his grandson John, were different men from John of Duxbury, and his son John, and grandson John, and that both sets were different men from John of Weymouth and his son John, who had four daughters and no son.

The next question is, "Which John was the son of Thomas of the Mayflower?" It has heretofore been assumed that John of Marshfield was; but it has also been assumed that this John and his wife Frances were the parents of the John who married Elizabeth Pabodie; this last assumption I have shown to be absolutely erroneous. John of Duxbury was the father of the John who married her, and, I believe, the son of Thomas. John of Marshfield was apparently too old, and Savage suggests that he was the brother of Thomas; he named his sons John, Joseph and Timothy, but had no Thomas; while Joseph, the son of Thomas, had Joseph, Thomas and John. But quite conclusive evidence arises from the relations of Joseph, known to be the son of Thomas and John of Duxbury. Joseph, and John his brother" are named in the records, and in numerous instances Joseph and John of Duxbury are named together; they both lived in the southerly part of Duxbury, near each other, while the other John lived in Marshfield. Joseph came over first, and when John came he naturally would be with his brother. We find him named with Joseph in 1633, and trace him, almost year by year, till his death in 1691; he married Ann Churchman in 1639, had a son (John) born in 1640, and a daughter (Abigail) born in 1642, as is shown by their ages at the time of their deaths.

I know that Deane gives Ann Churchman to John of Weymouth, and makes her the mother of Lydia, born in 1742; but he gives no evidence of his assertion; moreover, he says they were married at Weymouth, but their marriage is recorded in the Plymouth Colony records, and Weymouth was not in that colony, and the marriage was not recorded in the Weymouth records. Besides, he erroneously assumes that John of Duxbury was John of Weymouth, and went from Duxbury to Weymouth. John of Duxbury named his first daughter Abigail, probably for one of her grandmothers, and his second daughter Anna, for her mother. In addition, the tradition in the families of the descendants of John of Duxbury has always been that they descended from Thomas of the Mayflower. Taking all these facts together, they entirely overcome the mere assumption that John of Marshfield was the son of Thomas, especially when it is remembered that the same assumption makes John of Duxbury and John of Marshfield the same person.

ADDENDUM.

Since the foregoing was completed I have found the record of an agreement entered into before "Mr. Bradford, Governor," dated January 23, 1648, old style, by which Ephraim Hicks sold to John Rogers of Duxbury land "lying at the Illand creek at Duxbury aforesaid next unto the land on which the said John Rogers now liveth." The transaction was not completed until January 19, 1652, old style. As Island Creek was in the extreme southerly part of Duxbury as now existing, and North River, where the other

John lived, was the northern boundary, the suggestion that John Rogers of Duxbury lived so near the Marshfield line that he was sometimes on one side of it and sometimes on the other side, has no foundation.

MARTIN PRING.

BY JOSEPH WILLIAMSON.

Read before the Maine Historical Society, December 13, 1894. It is now well settled that Sebastian Cabot, in his search for the northwest passage, a year before Columbus discovered the American continent, sailed along the coast of Maine, and that Verrazano, a quarter of a century later, came in view of some of our islands and hills. No evidence exists that either of these navigators made any landing, and it is quite certain that they formed very crude ideas of our topography. While the icy seas and shores of Greenland, Labrador and Canada were depicted on the maps of the sixteenth century with a high degree of truth, the coast of New England remained neglected and unknown. And when at the beginning of the seventeenth century French and English adventurers arrived here, they had to begin the work of exploration anew. Hudson, who as late as 1609, sailed south of Cape Cod, and entered the Bay of New York, was justified in saying that he penetrated an unknown sea. Excepting the fishery of Newfoundland, the Europeans

at that time were in actual possession of no part of North America, although the English claimed a right to the whole by virtue of the prior discovery by the Cabots. In the language of the poet, the maxim in those days was,

The time once was here, to all be it known,

When all a man sailed by, or saw, was his own.

The opening of the seventeenth century witnessed a revival of colonial enterprise under Queen Elizabeth, and in March, 1602, Bartholomew Gosnold sailed for the new world in a small vessel called the "Concord." His company numbered thirty-two persons, a third of whom intended to remain and plant a colony. On the fourteenth of May, he sighted our coast near Casco Bay, calling the place Northland, twelve leagues southwest of which he visited Savage Rock, or Cape Neddock, whence the Indians came off, and by signs desired them to stay, but "the harbor being naught and doubting the weather," the invitation was not accepted. In the night, they departed southward to Boon Island, and thence to Cape Cod, which they rounded, and searched that island of the group now known as Cuttyhunk. The erection of a fortified house there, the lading of their vessel with sassafras and cedar, the final demoralization of the company, and its return to England after two months, are detailed by Gabriel Archer and John Bereford, journalists of the voyage.

Although the experience of the voyagers upon the island and mainland are given in length by the above named journalists, no mention of any landing within