John Stone came to Massachusetts in 1635 when he was about 17 years old. At age 21 he married and moved west to the new town of Sudbury, where he lived for about seven years. His home was in the part of town which later became Wayland. In 1646 or 1647 he moved south (up the Sudbury River) to Otter Neck, an area of primeval wilderness that became the core of what is now called Saxonville; it was included as part of Framingham when the latter was incorporated in 1700. Initially he simply squatted on the land, with no formal title from the Colony or the Indians, but in 1656 he purchased about a dozen acres at the falls of the Sudbury River from the Indians; this purchase was promptly confirmed and supplemented by the Massachusetts General Court. Altogether he built six houses in Sudbury and Framingham. One of these homes was not far from Saxonville Falls, on the site later occupied by the Saxonville Train Station and since about 1980 by the Saxonville Village Apartments (1595 Concord Street). He built a dam and gristmill at Saxonville Falls in 1658 or 1659. Through various purchases and grants he eventually amassed almost a thousand acres in this region, which became known as Stone's End. Since he was outside of the bounds of any town, he continued to attend church in Sudbury, and he was Sudbury town clerk in 1655. In 1672 he inherited his father's homestead in Cambridge and moved back there to occupy it.

Alfred S. Hudson's History of Sudbury says (p. 157): "... the [Framingham] frontier was pioneered by [settlers from Sudbury] as they marked out new trails or opened rude forest paths. It is supposed that at the time of Philip's war [1675-7], the Stones, Rices, Bents, Eameses, and Bradishes were the only English occupants on the Framingham Plantation. John Stone, at the falls of Sudbury River, was one of the nearest neighbors of Thomas Eames at Mt. Wayte; and at his home in the hollow, near the locality of the present railroad station, was the only English hearthstone from which a light gleamed at night, while about Dudley Pond and Cochituate the Rices had their share of solitude in their lone woodland home. Thus the loneliness of the settlers' life was a notable circumstance in the colonization experience of these bold Sudbury frontiersmen. The wild rushing of the water in the circuitous stream at the "falls," the sounds heard in the forest as the tall tree-tops were tossed by the wintry storms, and the wind swept through the dark woody dells, were in strange contrast with the noise of business that now proceeds from that active place."

Sources:
  Barry, William. 1847. A History of Framingham, Massachusetts, Including the Plantation, from 1640 to the Present Time. Online at Google Books (and downloadable).
  Bartlett, J. Gardner. 1918. The Gregory Stone Genealogy. Online at Google Books (and downloadable).
  Cutter, William R. 1908. Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of Boston and Eastern Massachusetts, vol. IV, p. 2131. Online at Google Books (and downloadable).
  Hudson, Alfred Sereno. 1889. The History of Sudbury, Massachusetts, 1638-1889. Online at ebooksread.com.
  "Saxonville – A Traditional New England Mill Village." A brochure prepared by the Friends of Saxonville, Inc.: front, back.
  Saxonville Historic/Nature Walk. For an experience of Stone's End, hike the Carol J. Getchell Nature Trail, which runs for one mile alongside the Sudbury River, beginning next to the Danforth Street Bridge and ending at Little Farms Road. Going in the roughly the opposite direction is the Cochituate Rail Trail, which follows the old railroad bed from Saxonville to Natick Center.

The basic map here is from mapquest.com, because maps.google.com (as of March 2009) does not represent the Sudbury River Ox-Bow accurately.