Estate / Collection: The Victor Gulotta Collection

WATERS, LAWRENCE

Autograph Grand Jury Appointment Signed. Lancaster, Massachusetts: 25 September 1667. Autograph manuscript in ink on a rectangular slip of paper, 8 lines in Waters' hand signed as "Lawrence Waters Constable," the document appointing two men "to serve on the grand jury of the next county court to be held at Cambridge." Fine overall. Provenance: James Cummins Bookseller

Lawrence Waters (1602-1687) came to Massachusetts in about 1634 and came to own land quickly. He married Anna Linton (several sources indicate they had been warned not to dance before marriage) and relocated to Lancaster in the late 1640s to clear land for the incoming colonists of the Nashaway Company. This official document was written in this period. Later there was a garrison on the Waters property during King Philip’s War. Waters, blind by this time had withdrawn to Charlestown after the massacre of August 1675. But during the Native American raids on Lancaster in February 1676, Mary Rowlandson and her children were taken captive for 11 weeks, and other survivors fled and hid at the garrison on Waters' land. In 1682, Rowlandson published her account of the ordeal which remains one of the best-known early American captivity narratives.

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