American AcornsBACKGROUND, NOT PROOF: The Boston Gazette, 25 December 1753, p. 1: a Massachusetts act renewing cash premiums for killing wolves, catamounts and wild cats. It names no one and says nothing about the Oak family; it shows only that Massachusetts paid bounties of this kind, about seventy years after the date the family story gives for Nathaniel Oak's arrival.
Document · dated 25 Dec 1753 · source: The Boston Gazette, Boston, 25 December 1753; America's Historical Newspapers (Readex), via AmericanAncestors.org
How it is shown: Complete page as supplied; no crop, no retouch, no search highlight. Attached as context to the Nathaniel Oak story, not as a record of his life.
Keep in mind: What the page says: Confirmed from a direct reading. The act renews an earlier one ('the aforesaid Act'; 'the Encouragement given by Law has failed of answering the proposed Design'), so it is not the first Massachusetts bounty law, and the date of the first such law is still open. It runs three years from 20 Oct 1753. Whether this concerns our person: not applicable. The act is province-wide legislation that names no person; Nathaniel Oak is tagged only so that the page can sit with his story as background. It does not date, confirm or corroborate the family's wildcat-bounty tradition, which the story itself places decades before any surviving American newspaper.