Note 87 — Chapter 5 OF STANDISH’S EXPEDITION AGAINST THE INDIANS OF WESSAGUSSET, AND THE BREAKING UP OF WESTON’S COLONY AT THAT PLACE.

Morton says, “this man’s name was Phinehas Prat, who has penned the particulars of his perilous journey, and some other things relating to this tragedy.” Hubbard states that he was living in 1677, at the time he was writing his History of New England. In 1662 the General Court of Massachusetts, in answer to a petition of Phinehas Prat, then of Charlestown, which was accompanied “with a narrative of the straits and hardships that the first planters of this Colony underwent in their endeavours to plant themselves at Plymouth, and since, whereof he was one, the Court judgeth it meet to grant him 300 acres of land, where it is to be had, not hindering a plantation.” At the Court held May 3, 1665, it was ordered that land be laid out for Prat, “in the wilderness on the east of the Merrimack river, near the upper end of Nacook [Pennacook?] brook, on the southeast of it.” Prat married in 1630, at Plymouth, a daughter of Cuthbert Cuthbertson. His heirs had grants of land in Abington subsequent to 1672. Drake says that after long search he has not been able to discover Prat’s narrative. It was probably never printed. See Morton’s Memorial, p. 90; Drake’s Book of the Indians, b. ii. 35; Mass. Hist. Coll. xv. 78, xvii. 122.