Petition of Thomas and Patience Nichols to the Massachusetts General Court

To the Honorable the Council, and Honorable the House of Representatives for the State of the Massachusetts Bay in General Court Assembled

The petition of Thomas Nichols of Grafton in the County of Worcester and State aforesaid, labourer, humbly sheweth that my wife, Patience Nichols, being an Indian woman, sometime since purchased about forty acres of land in Grafton aforesaid of  [ crossout ] Indians belonging to said Grafton, Natives of the land, said land lying adjoining to land of Hezekiah Taylor and others, that your petitioner has purchased lands in New Grafton in the State of New Hampshire,1 which will be much more convenient and advantageous for a settlement, that your petitioner will not be able to pay for his purchase at New Grafton without making sale of the aforesaid land in Grafton, that the land in Grafton is uncultivated and has no buildings thereon, nor any road to it, in both which respects the other land at New Grafton is accommodated, and that although the deed was made to my wife, she being an Indian, yet your petitioner advanced the money to pay the purchase.

Your petitioner, therefore, prays that Your Honors would empower him to make sale of said land in Grafton and to give a good and lawful deed of sale of the same as he now has an opportunity to make sale of the same to good advantage.

And as in duty bound shall ever pray,

• 1. Settled as a small farming and mining town, Grafton in Grafton County, New Hampshire had been incorporated five years earlier in 1773. New Hampshire Gazetteer, 137-138.