Autograph Document, Signed ("Thad. Mason"), as Clerk of the Middlesex Courts for a legal deed between Abigail and Benjamin Waters

Charlestown, [Mass.], 1757. 1 p., partially printed and accomplished, docketed on verso. 1 vols. Folio. Old folds, minor holes affecting some text, toning, else VG. 1 p., partially printed and accomplished, docketed on verso. 1 vols. Folio. FAMILY FARM FROM A 1663 LAND GRANT. In 1663, Francis Norton and Nicholas Davison were granted 500 acres by Charlestown for various services rendered to the town. Norton was a haberdasher and successful merchant, who made most of his money in the fur and fish trades, in which his neighbor, Nicholas Davison was a frequent partner and collaborator. Their widows were deeded the land after their deaths. This indenture between Abigail Waters of Charlestown, to her son, Benjamin Waters, of Salem, for the sale of her land in Worcester, for the sum of five pounds is the land from Norton and Davison's original grant. Reading in part: "Containing in the whole about 500 acres and was given by the Town of Charlestown aforesaid to the Widows Norton and Davison which widow Norton gave her half of said land to her daughter Abigail Stone my Mother deceased which farm is described in the Whole in a Grant made by the Great General Court of the province of the Massachusetts Bay..." The document is signed by Abigail Waters with her mark and is also signed by John Chandler, Register of Deeds for Worcester.

Abigail (Stone) Waters (1693 - After 1759) was the daughter of Elias Stone and Abigail Long. She married Benjamin Waters on October 18, 1717 and had five children.

Thaddeus Mason (1706-1802), was the son of John and Elizabeth (Spring) Mason, of Lexington, Mass. He graduated at Harvard College in 1728, and was the private secretary of Gov. Belcher, whose son, Jonathan, was his classmate. Mason also held the offices of Deputy Naval Officer; Deputy Secretary of the Province; and Clerk of the Middlesex Courts and Register of Deeds. [See Gould's Ancient Middlesex, p. 169.]

Benjamin Waters (1721-1786) was born in Charlestown to Benjamin Waters and Abigail Stone. he later moved to Salem, where he was a baker and keeper of the Beverly ferry. He married Esther Gilbert and had seven children. He died in Washington, Dutchess County, New York. Many of Benjamin Waters' papers and other related Waters' family documents and manuscripts are archived in the library of Essex Peabody Museum, in Essex, MA.