Harvard was set off from Groton, Lancaster, and Stow by petitions to the General Court. The incorporators included Simon Stone of Groton, Thomas Wheeler of Stow, and Jonathan Whitney and Hezekiah Willard of Lancaster. The name Harvard was inserted in the engrossed bill in the handwriting of Secretary of State Josiah Willard, following the custom used when neither the Governor nor the petitioners had suggested a name for the new town. A historic millstone in the town came from one of a pair of millstones from Harvard's oldest mill site, the John Prescott Mill, built in 1668 at Nonacoicus Brook on Old Mill Road.