ELDER JOHN(2) STONE [Dea. Gregory (1)], born in Nayland, Suffolk, England, and baptized 31 July 1618, when about seventeen years old accompanied his father to New England in 1635, and presumbly spent the remainder of his minority with the latter in Watertown and Cambridge, Mass. On becoming of age in 1639 he married, and was evidently then advanced by his father a portion of his patrimony with which he established himself in the new town of Sudbury, Mass. The site of his homestead has been located; but the only traces now remaining of any building there are a few fragments of crudely made brick, probably remnants of a chimney or hearth. The house was situated in the present town of Wayland (formerly East Sudbury), on a nine-acre lot on the northerly side of the main highway from Watertown, first called the "Watertown Trail." later termed "East Street." and "North Street," amd at a point about a quarter of a mile west of Pond lBrook. His adjoining neighbors were Henry Clurtis on the east and Nathaniel Treadway on the west. John(2) Stone lived here about seven years. The Sudbury Records mention in 1640 three grants of meadows, on what is now Wayland, to John Stone; on 22 Feb. 1669/40, two acres on 20 Apr. 1640, four and a half acres; and on 18 Nov. 1640, nine acres. He also shared in divisions of uplands and commons.
In 1646 he sold all his property in Sudbury to John Moore, and in 1847 removed up the Sudbury River into then primeval wilderness and built a house at Otter Neck iin which is now Framingham, being the first settler within the limits of what later becme this town. This whole region for the next thiry years was inhabite by less than a dozen families and was legallywithin no town; but inhabitants attended Sudbury Church and are mentioned in the records of that town. After the close of SKing Pillip's War (1677), the propulation rapidly increased, and in 1700, Framingham was incorporated as a town.
From 1640 to 1700, the territory of Framingham was considered province land, and numerous large grants were made to various individuals by the General Court, viz.: to Mrs. Eliizabeth Glover, six hundred acres in 1640; to Thomas Mayhew, thre hundred acres in 1643; to Richard Wayte, three hundred acres in 1658; to Elijah Corlett, two hundred acres in 1659, and to Thomas Danforth about fourteen thousand acres in 1662. Other grants were made later.
At the time John(2) Stone first settled at Otter Neck in 1647, he simply squatted on the land with no written title either from the Colony government or from the Indians. But on 15 May 1656, he secured a deed from the Indians of about a dozen acres of land in what is now Saxonville, which was at once confirmed by the General Court which granted him fifty additional acres adjoining. On 13 Dec. 1661 he bought the Corlett farm of two hundred acres, on 15 Sept.1666, he and Nathaniel Treadway, executors and residuary legatees of the will of Edward Howe, were deeded by Thomas Mayhew his three hundred acre grant to cancel a debt to Howes; and by various other purchases John(2) Stone acquiredd in all nearly a thousand acres covering much of the present Saxonville. In 1658 he built a new house near the location of the present Saxonville railroad station, and later he built houses for his sons in that vicinity. He also built, about 1658, a dam and gristmill on the falls of the Sudbury River, where the Stone family owned the mill privlidge for several generations. It thus appears John(2) Stone was a successful and prosperous famer and by industry and frugality acquired an extensive landed estate and a huge family of children.
Living in an unincorporated region during the twenty-five most important and active years of his life (1647-1672), John(2) Stone was not prominent in public affairs of Sudbury, the town with which he was associated , exccept that he served as town clerk in 1655 and was for some years one of the deacons in the Sudbury Church. After the death of his father in 1672, he removed to Cambridge, inheriting his father's homestead there; and in 1682 and 1683 he was chosen a deputy for that town to the Massachusetts General Court. On 13 Nov. 1682, he wwas elected one of the two ruling elders of the Cambridge Church, a mark of the high esteem in which he was held by his fellow townsmen. He died at Cambridge, 5 May 1683, in his sixty-fifth year, and was buried in the old Cambridge Cemetery, where his gravestone bears the following inscription:
Me ento le esse Mortalem
Here lyeth ye body of Elder John Stone
Aged 64 years
Who departed this life ye 5th day of May
1683
Elder John(2) Stone married in 1639, Anne _______, who had his children and survived him. For over a half century there has been much speculation as to her lparentage. She and Nathaniel Treadway (her next-door neighbor in Sudbury) were the principal and residuary legatees (with no named relationship) of the will in 1644, oof Edward Howe of Watertown, Mass., who was batized 1 Jan. 1587/8 at Boxted, co. Essex, England, directly across the Stour River from Nayland, co. Suffolk, and married there, 16 Aug 1610, Margaret Wells; so it has been generall claimed that Anne wife of John Stone and Suffrana wife of Nathaniel Treadway were sisters, and daughters of Edward Howe. These ideas are erroneous, as it has been proved that Nathaniel Treadway married in New England, in 1639, Suffrana Haynes, daughter of Walter Haynes, who came from Wiltshire, in 1638 and she had no sister named Anne and there is no evidence that Edward Howe had any surviving children. The English origin of Nathaniel Treadway has not been discovered; but the writer has found this rare family name only in Essex and Herts. The registers oof Boxted are lost from 1617 to 1640, so data on the Howes there are incomplete. From what evidences are yet available, it seems likely that Anne, wife of John(2) Stone, was a sister of Nathaniel Treadway and that their mother was a sister of Edward Howe, thus making them niece and nephew of the latter.