House of John Procter, Witchcraft Martyr, 1692

The return of the settlement of the northwesterly bounds of the Downing Farm in 1681, recorded in Salem town records, gives the line from the extreme northwestern corner by Putnam's land as running "strait on to a white oak called Morey's Bound."

In a controversy which seems to have existed in 1685 and in 1690 between Anthony Needham and the owners of land adjoining his, presumably the owners of the Downing Farm, Nathaniel Felton testifies that "about 30 years since" (that is about 1660) "Mr. Thomas Gardner and Jeffry Massey (who by virtue of a grant of 200 acres due unto Mr. Bacon[A]) when they went to lay out the said 200 acres I this deponent went with them, where cominge upon the land neere adjoyning to the farm called Mr. Downings farme, the first bound they made of the said two hundred acres was upon a hill being as I conceive about 20 rods on the north side of the highway[B] leading up to Joseph Pope's farme, and was a white oak sufficiently marked, ye which white oak t