The Earle family : Ralph Earle and his descendants

32 THE EARLE FAMILY [Third
on their return. In the course of the next following year, 171 7, he
removed with a part of his family to Leicester, and purchased two
tracts or lots of land of the original Proprietors of that town. The
two tracts contained about 550 acres. One of them included the
Mulberry Grove (now George and Billings Mann's) and some of the
adjoining farms, and the other was on the west side of Asnebumskit
hill, in what is now Paxton. Its westerly boundary appears to have
been the road leading northerly from the Penniman place, one mile
east of Paxton centre.
"Janowari 3, 1722, Ralf Earll Entred his mark (for cattle) the
Top of the left Ear off."
His dwelling house was about one and one-half miles north-easterly
from the central village of Leicester, on Mulberry street, and very
near the site of the present residence of Benjamin Wilson. It was a
gambrel-roofed building of but one story, and was taken down in the
year 1846.
At a town meeting March 5, 1721, it was " Voated that Ralph
Earl" should have a certain " pew spot" in the meeting-house, he
paying the town twenty shillings.
Within the next succeeding twelve years a meeting of the Society
of Friends, commonly called Quakers, was organized in the town.
Ralph joined it, and in 1732, he, his sons William and Robert and
four other men, asked to be released from paying " any part of the
Tax for the Seport of the minister or ministers established by the
Laws of this province," alleging that they were Quakers, with a
conscientious scruple against such payment, and laying claim to
" the Privileges granted" to the people so-called. A meeting-house
was erected upon a lot taken from the farms of Ralph and his neighbor
and fellow-Quaker, Nathaniel Potter, both of whose bodies now
repose within a few feet of its site.
Ralph's interest in the Society was such that he went to Philadel-
phia to visit William Penn. Penn was at that time building a house
at Pennsburg, and it is said that he told Ralph that he would put the
initials of his name upon the chimney.
At a town meeting March 22, 1736, " Voted to alow Mr. Ralph
Earl four shillings to meet Worcester men to preambulate y e line
between Worcester & lester."
It has been said that Ralph once owned Mount Hope, R. I., but
no deed of it can be found upon record.