stranger to most of them when he was appointed their captain. On which occasion he made 'a very civil speech,' and allowed them to choose their sergeants themselves." He had no time to settle his accounts, arrange his affairs, or confer with any one, but led his company at once to the rendezvous. These circumstances, perhaps, partially explain why so little seems to have been known of him in Boston, or to local writers.[i.129] Besides Captains Gardner and Davenport and the men whose names have been mentioned as killed or wounded, there were in the Narragansett fight the following from Salem Village and its farming neighborhood: John Dodge, William Dodge, William Raymond, Thomas Raymond, John Raymond, Joseph Herrick, Thomas Putnam, Jr., Thomas Abbey, Robert Leach, and Peter Prescott. There may have been others: no full roll is on record. The foregoing are gathered from partial returns miscellaneously collected in the files at the State House. The Dodges (sometimes the name is written Dodds, which appears, I think, to have been its original form), and the Raymonds (sometimes written Rayment), were, from the first, conspicuous in military affairs. A few words explanatory of their relation to the village may be here properly given. On the 25th of January, 1635, the town of Salem voted to William Trask, John Woodbury, Roger Conant, Peter Palfrey, and John Balch, a tract of land, as follows: "Two hundred acres apiece together lying, being at the head of Bass River, one hundred and twenty-four poles in breadth, and so running northerly to the river by the great pond side, and so in breadth, making up the full quantity of a thousand acres." These men were original settlers, having been in the country for some time before Endicott's arrival. This circumstance gave to them and others the distinguishing title of "old planters." The grant of a thousand acres, comprising the five farms above mentioned, was always known as "the Old Planters' Farms." The[i.130] first proprietors of them, and their immediate successors, appear to have arranged and managed them in concert,—to have had homesteads near together between the head of Bass River and the neighborhood of the "horse bridge," where the meeting-house of the Second Congregational Society of Beverly, or of the "Precinct of Salem and Beverly" now stands. Their woodlands and pasture lands were further to the north and east. An inspection of the map will give an idea of the general locality of the "Old Planters' Farms" in the aggregate—above the head of Bass River, extending northerly towards "the river," as the Ipswich River was called, and easterly to the "great pond," that is, Wenham Lake. Conant, Woodbury, and Balch occupied their lands at once. I have stated how Trask's portion of the grant went into the hands of Scruggs, and then of John Raymond. Palfrey is thought never to have occupied his portion. He sold it to William Dodge, the founder of the family of that name, known by