Log-book of Timothy Boardman

This tract which should have been called “Boardman county,” had been originally purchased of the Indians by one John Brown, probably as early as the close of King Phillip’s war. It was purchased by the Boardman brothers in 1732, from the great-grandchildren of John Brown, requiring a considerable number of deeds which are now on record in the county clerk’s office at York, Maine. These deeds were from Wm. Huxley, Eleazar Stockwell, and many others, heirs of John Brown, and of Richard Pearse his son-in-law. Two of them show $2,000 each as the sums paid for their purchase.

William Frazier, a grandson of Timothy, and an own cousin of the author of the Log-Book, received something more than two townships, and although German intruders early settled upon these lands, many of whose descendants are now among the leading citizens of that county, yet there seems to be little reason to doubt that if, after the close of the Revolutionary war, the author of the Log-Book and other heirs had gone in quest of those ample possessions, something handsome, perhaps half of the county, might have been secured. There is a tradition that the true owners were betrayed as non-resident owners of unimproved lands often are, by their legal agents, who accepted of bribes to defraud those whose interests they had promised to secure.

Timothy Boardman 1st, died in mid-life, at the age of fifty-three, and this noble inheritance was lost to his heirs. The county became thickly settled, and the Boardman titles though acknowledged valid, were it is said, confiscated by the Legislature of Massachusetts in favor of the actual occupants of the soil, as the shortest though unjust settlement of the difficulty.

The fourth generation, the great-grandsons of Samuel included several men of prominence, some of whom have been already noticed. Hon. Sherman Boardman of New Milford; Rev. Benjamin Boardman, the army chaplain, of Hartford, and others. The majority of the family, however, were plain and undistinguished men of sterling Puritan qualities, and of great usefulness in their several spheres, in the church and in society. Many were deacons and elders in their churches, these were too numerous for further especial mention, except in a single line. The third child of Timothy, the Maine land proprietor, only four years old when Lincoln Co., Me. was purchased by his father, became a carpenter, ship-builder and cabinet maker, and settled in Middletown, Ct., which his great-grandfather Samuel had surveyed nearly a century before. He married Jemima Johnson, Nov. 14, 1751, and his oldest child, born Jan. 20, 1754, was the author of the Log-Book. The preaching of Whitfield, and the “Great Awakening” of the American churches, North, South and Central, at this time, and for a whole generation, immediately preceding the Revolutionary war, had very much quickened the religious life even of the children of the New England Puritans. The Boardman family obviously felt the influence of this great revival. The country was anew pervaded with intense religious influences.

Many letters and other papers remain from different branches of the family of this and of more recent dates, exhibiting a deeply religious spirit. The boy Timothy grew up in an atmosphere filled with such influences. Many of the habits and feelings brought by the Puritans from England still prevailed. To the day of his death he retained much of the spirit of those early associations. He left a double portion to his oldest son. He inherited the traits of the Puritans; intelligence; appreciation of education; deference for different ages and relations in society; piety, industry, economy and thrift. His advantages at school in the flourishing village of Middletown must have been exceptionally good; he early learned to write in an even, correct and handsome hand, which he retained for nearly three-quarters of a century; his school book on Navigation is before me.

More attention was paid to a correct and handsome chirography, at that time, the boyhood of Washington, Jefferson, Sherman and Putnam, than at a later day when a larger range of studies had been introduced. “The Young Secretary’s Guide,” a volume of model letters, business forms, etc., is preserved; it bears on the first leaf “Timothy Boardman, his Book, A.D. 1765.” The hand is copy-like, and very handsome, and extraordinary if it is his, as it seems to be; though he was then but eleven years old. A large manuscript volume of Examples in Navigation, obviously in his handwriting, doubtless made in his youth, is also before me. The writing and diagrams are like copper-plate. No descendant of his, so far as known to the writer could have exceeded it in neatness and skill. In his early boyhood the French and Indian war filled the public mind with excitement; reports of the exploits of Col. Israel Putnam were circulated, as they occurred. The conquest of Canada under Gen. Wolf filled the colonies with pride and patriotism. But already disaffection between the mother country and the colonies had arisen. Resistance to the tea tax and other offensive measures were discussed at every fireside. The writer before he was seven years old caught from the author of the Log-Book, then over eighty, something of the indignant feeling toward England which the latter had acquired at the very time when the tea was thrown overboard into Boston harbor. Timothy Boardman was ripe for participation in armed resistance when the war came. He was just twenty-one as the first blood was shed at Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775. Putnam who had left his plow in the furrow, was with his Connecticut soldiers, in action, if not in chief command at Bunker hill. Timothy Boardman joined the army which invested Boston, under Washington in the winter of 1775-1776. He was stationed, doubtless with a Connecticut regiment, on Dorchester Heights, now South Boston.

After completing this service, in the great uprising of the people to oppose the southward progress of Burgoyne, he was called out and marched toward Saratoga, but the surrender took place before his regiment arrived. With his father he had worked at finishing houses, and the inside of vessels built on the Connecticut river, on which Middletown is situated. In the winter he was employed largely in cabinet work, in the shop; I have the chest which he made and used on the Oliver Cromwell.

Congress early adopted the policy of sending out privateers or armed vessels to capture British merchant vessels. These vessels became prizes for the captors. The Oliver Cromwell was chartered by Connecticut, with letters of marque and reprisal from the United States. Captain Parker was in command. The Defence accompanied the Oliver Cromwell; they sailed from New London; Timothy Boardman then twenty-four years of age enlisted and went on board; he commenced keeping the Log-Book April 11, 1778; he seems to have been head carpenter on board the ship, and to have had severe labors. His assistants appear to have deserted him before the close of the voyage. It was his duty to make any needful repairs after a storm, or in an engagement and to perform any such service necessary even at the time of greatest danger. In a terrific storm it was decided to cut away the mast. His hat fell from his head, but he scarcely felt it worth while to pick it up, as all were liable so soon to go to the bottom. In action, his place was below deck, to be in readiness with his tools and material to stop instantly, if possible, any leak caused by the enemies’ shot. At one time the rigging above him was torn and fell upon him, some were killed; blood spattered over him, and it was shouted “Boardman is killed.” He, however, and another man on board, a Mr. Post, father of the late Alpha Post of Rutland, were spared to make their homes for half a century among the peaceful hills of Vermont.

In the following year 1779, he seems to have sailed down the Atlantic coast on an American merchant vessel. He was captured off Charleston, S. Carolina, by the British, but after a few days’ detention, on board his Majesty’s vessel, it was thought cheaper to send the prisoners on shore than to feed them, and he and his companions were given a boat and set at liberty. They reached Charleston in safety. The city was under martial law, and the new-comers were for about six weeks put upon garrison duty. About this time Lord Cornwallis was gaining signal advantages in that vicinity, while Gen. Gates, who had received the surrender of Burgoyne, three years before, was badly defeated. After completing this service the author of the Log-Book, started to walk home to Connecticut. He proceeded on foot to North Carolina, where Andrew Jackson was, then a poor boy of twelve years. Jackson’s father, a young Irish emigrant died within two years after entering those forests, and his widow soon to become the mother of a President, was “hauled” through their clearing, from their deserted shanty, to his grave, among the stumps, in the same lumber wagon with the corpse of her husband. He had been dead twelve years when the pilgrim from Connecticut passed that way. Overcome, probably by fatigue and by malaria, his progress was arrested in North Carolina by fever, and he lay sick all winter among strangers.

In the spring of 1780, unable probably, to proceed on foot, he embarked from some port, on a merchant ship bound for St. Eustatia, a Dutch island, in the West Indies. He was again captured and taken prisoner by the British.

He was, however, transferred to a British merchant vessel on which he rendered a little service by way of commutation, when he was set at liberty on St. Eustatia. The island has an area of 189 square miles, population 13,700; latitude 17°, 30', North. Climate generally healthy, but with terrific hurricanes and earthquakes, soil very fertile and highly cultivated by the thrifty Hollanders, with slave labor. It has belonged successively to the Spanish, French, English and Dutch. Having been enfeebled by his fever of the winter before, Timothy Boardman now twenty-six years old, worked for several months at his trade with good wages. I have heard him say that there the tropical sun shone directly down the chimney. He used to relate also, how fat the young negroes would become in sugaring time, when the sweets of the canefield flowed as freely as water. He returned home to Connecticut probably late in the year 1780. Vermont was then the open field for emigration. It was rapidly receiving settlers from Connecticut. I have no knowledge that he ever made any account of the immense tract in Maine, purchased and held by deeds, still on record at York, Me., by his grandfather, and in which he, as the oldest grandson, born a few days after his grandfather’s death and named for him, might have been expected to be interested.

He was now twenty-seven. A large family of younger children had long occupied his father’s house. He sought a home of his own. His younger brothers Elisha and Oliver were married and settled before him. He seems to have inherited something of the ancestral enterprise of the Puritans, “hankering for new land.” All his brothers and sisters settled in Connecticut, but he made his way in 1781 to Vermont. For a year 1781-1782, he worked at his trade in Bennington. During this time, he purchased a farm in Addison, it is supposed of Ira Allen, a brother of the redoubtable Ethan Allen; but the title proved, as so often happened, with the early settlers to be defective. He recovered, many years afterward, through the fidelity and skill of his lawyer, the Hon. Daniel Chipman of Middlebury, the hard earned money which he had paid for the farm at Chimney Point. It shows how thrifty he must have been, and how resolute in his purpose to follow a pioneer life in Vermont, that after this great loss he still had money, and a disposition to buy another farm among the Green Mountains. Having put his hand to the plow, he did not turn back. He did not perhaps like to have his Connecticut kindred and friends think he had failed in what he had undertaken. He had saved a good portion of his wages for six or seven years. He had received, as the most faithful man in the crew, a double share in the prizes taken by the Oliver Cromwell. He had perhaps received some aid from his father. Though he had paid for and lost one unimproved farm, he was able to buy, and did purchase another. He came to Rutland, Vt., in 1782 and bought one hundred acres of heavily timbered land from the estate of Rev. Benajah Roots, whose blood has long flowed in the same veins, with his own. He perhaps thought that if he bought of a minister, he would get a good title. He may have known Mr. Roots, at least by reputation, in Connecticut, for he had been settled at Simsbury, Ct., before coming to a home missionary field in Rutland. The owner of the land was in doubt whether to sell it.

The would-be purchaser had brought the specie with which to buy it, in a strong linen bag, still it is supposed preserved in the family, near the same spot. “Bring in your money,” said a friend, “and throw it down on a table, so that it will jingle well.” The device was successful, the joyful sound, where silver was so scarce, brought the desired effect. The deed was soon secured, for the land which he owned for nearly sixty years.

A clearing was soon made on this land at a point which lies about one-half mile south of Centre Rutland, and a-half mile west of Otter creek on the slope of a high hill. It was then expected that Centre Rutland would be the capital of Vermont. In 1783, he erected amid the deep forests, broken only here and there by small clearings, a small framed house. He never occupied a log-house; as he was himself a skillful carpenter, house-joiner and cabinet maker and had been reared in a large village, a city, just as he left it, his taste did not allow him to dispense with so many of the comforts of his earlier life as many were compelled to relinquish.

He returned to Middletown, and was married, Sept. 28th, 1783, to Mary, the eighth child and fifth daughter of Capt. Samuel Ward of Middletown, who had twelve children. The Ward family were of equal standing with his own. The newly married couple were each a helpmeet unto the other, and had probably known each other from early life in the same church and perhaps in the same public school. They were both always strongly attached to Middletown, their native place; it cost something to tear themselves away and betake themselves to a new settlement, which they knew must long want many of the advantages which they were leaving. I remember the pride and exhileration with which, in his extreme old age, he used to speak of Middletown, as he pointed out on his two maps, one of them elaborate, in his native city, the old familiar places. He revisited it from time to time during his long life, the last time in 1837, only a year and a-half before his death.

In his journeys between Rutland and Middletown, which he visited with his wife, the second year after their marriage, he must have met many kindred by the way. His Uncle Daniel Boardman lived in Dalton, and his Uncle John in Hancock, Mass., while three brothers of his wife, and a sister, Mrs. Charles Goodrich, resided in Pittsfield. Mrs. Ward, his mother-in-law, lived also in Pittsfield with her children, till 1815, when she was ninety-six years old, her oldest son seventy-six, and her eighth child, Mrs. Boardman, over sixty. She and her son-in-law, Judge Goodrich, the founder of Pittsfield, who was of about her own age, lived, it is said to be the oldest persons in Berkshire Co. He had also a cousin Mrs. Francis at Pittsfield, and a favorite cousin Elder John Boardman, at Albany and another cousin, Capt. George Boardman in Schenectady. These three cousins were children of his uncle Charles of Wethersfield. His grandmother Boardman, the widow of the Maine land proprietor, also spent her last days in Dalton, and died there at her son Daniel’s, about the time when Timothy first went to Vermont.

His youngest brother William, distinctly remembered my grandfather’s playing with him, and bantering him when a little child, and also the September morning when with his father and mother he rode over in a chaise to Capt. Ward’s to attend Timothy’s wedding. He told me that when Timothy was there last, he shed some tears, as he cut for himself a memorial cane, by the river’s bank, where he used to play in boyhood, and said he should never see the place again. William, whom he used to call “Bill,” named a son for him, Timothy.

The spot where he built his first house, and called on the name of the Lord, and where his first two or three children were born, is now off the road, at a considerable distance, about a-half mile north-east of the house, occupied by his grandson, Samuel Boardman, Esq., of West Rutland. It is near a brook, in a pasture, cold, wet, bunchy and stony, and does not look as if it had ever been plowed. He had better land which he cultivated afterward, and which yielded abundantly. But at first he must have wrung a subsistence from a reluctant soil. Yet the leaf-mould and ashes from burned timber on fields protected by surrounding forests would produce good wheat, corn and vegetables. Near that spot still stands one very old apple tree and another lies fallen and decaying near by. So tenacious are the memorials of man’s occupancy, even for a short time.

After a few years he removed this small framed house, fifty rods westward and dug and walled for it a cellar which still remains, a pit filled with stones, water and growing alders. He then made some additions to the house as demanded by his growing family. He also built near it a barn. His house was still on the cold, bushy land which slopes to the north-east, and is now only occupied for pasturage. Here seven young children occupied with him his pioneer home.

The tradition used to be, that at first he incurred somewhat the derision of his neighbors, better skilled in backwoodsman’s lore than himself, by hacking all around a tree, in order to get it down. It is said that some imagined his land would soon be in the market, and sold cheap; that the city bred farmer, better taught in navigation and surveying, than in clearing forests and in agriculture, would become tired and discouraged and abandon his undertaking. But he remained and persevered, and his good Puritan qualities, industry, frugality, good management, and persistency for the first ten or fifteen years, determined his whole subsequent career and that of his family. He was never rich, but he secured a good home, dealt well with his children, and became independent for the remainder of his life. Indeed, like most New England Puritans, of resolute and conscientious industry, and of moderate expenditures, he was always independent after he was of age.

A man of such character, and of so fair an education would, of course, soon be valued in any community, and be especially useful in a new settlement where skill with the pen and the compass are rarer than in older places.

He was appreciated and was soon made town clerk of Rutland, and county surveyor for Rutland county. He was also in time made captain of the militia, in recognition perhaps, in part, of his Revolutionary services. He was also made clerk of the Congregational church, I have some of his church records. On Nov. 20th, 1805, he was elected a deacon. He was also on the committee to revise the Articles of Faith and Rules of Discipline. About 1792, he bought fifty acres of good land lying west of his first purchase, and on this ground, one hundred rods west of his previous home, and about half a mile south-west of the spot first occupied, he erected in 1799, a good two-story house, which is still in excellent preservation, where till his death, he lived in a home as ample and commodious as the better class of those with which he had been familiar in his native state.

In sixteen years after coming to the unbroken forest on what has since been called “Boardman hill,” he had won a good position in society and in the church, and a comfortable property. He was afflicted in the death of his oldest daughter and child, Hannah, October 26, 1803. But this was the only death that occurred in his family for more than fifty-three years. His six remaining children lived to an average age of about eighty.

The Congregational church in West Rutland, one of the oldest in Vermont, had been formed in 1773, nine years before his arrival. He became a member in 1785, and his wife in 1803. Not long after his coming, Rev. Mr. Roots, the pastor, died, and the widely known Rev. Samuel Haynes, a devout, able and witty man, became their pastor, and so continued for thirty years, until his dismission in 1818. Timothy Boardman’s children were early taken to church, were trained and all came into the church under, the ministry of Rev. Mr. Haynes.

He said that he would sooner do without bread than without preaching, and he was always a conscientious and liberal supporter of the church. He appreciated and co-operated with his pastor. In the great revival of 1808, five of his children were gathered into the church. One of them, perhaps all of them, were previously regarded by their parents as religious.

In politics he was a Federalist. In respect to the war with Great Britain 1812-1815, his views did not entirely coincide with those of some others, including his associate in the diaconate, Dea. Chatterton, who was a rigid Democrat. This eminently devout and useful man, was so burdened with Dea. Boardman’s lukewarmness in promoting the second war with Great Britain, against whose armies both had fought in the Revolution, that he felt constrained to take up a labor with him, hoping to correct his political errors by wholesome church discipline. It must have been a scene for a painter.

Perhaps no better man or one more effective for good, ever lived in West Rutland than Dea. Chatterton. In both politics and religion he was practical and fervid. The church meeting was crowded.

The occasion compelled my grandfather, as Paul was driven, in his epistle to the Corinthians, and as Demosthenes was forced in his oration for the crown, to enter somewhat upon his own past record. Though a very modest and unpretentious man, yet it is said that the author of the Log-Book, on this memorable occasion straightened himself up, and boldly referred his hearers to the glorious days of the war for Independence, which had tried men’s souls, and when he had forever sealed the genuineness of his own patriotism, by hazarding his life both by sea and land for his country.

Weighed in the balances on his own record, so far from being found wanting, his patriotism was proved to be of the finest gold; and his place like that of Paul, not a whit behind that of the chiefest apostle. Though he did not feel it to be his duty to fall in behind the tap of the drum, and volunteer to fight, beside the aged democratic veteran who served with him at the communion table; yet he showed that the older was not a better soldier; that with diversities of politics, there was the same loyalty, and that his own patriotism was no less than his brother’s.

The tremendous strain which the struggle for American Independence put upon the generation who encountered it, was touchingly illustrated in the lives of these two men, a generation, or two generations after the struggle had been successfully closed. Amid the quiet hills of Vermont, the minds of both were affected for a time, with at least partial derangement. Dea. Boardman labored temporarily under the hallucination, that he was somehow liable to arrest, and prepared a chamber for his defence. He was obliged, for a time to be watched, though he was never confined. A journey to Connecticut, on horseback, with his son Samuel, when he was perhaps sixty years old, effected an entire cure. Dea. Chatterton in his extreme old age, after a life of remarkable piety, became a maniac and was obliged to be confined. He had suffered peculiar hardships, perhaps on the prison-ships, in the Revolution; and his incoherent expressions, in his insanity, sixty years afterward, and just before his death, were full of charges against the “British.”

Timothy Boardman’s supreme interest in life, however, was in his loyalty to Christ, and his intense desires were for the extension and full triumph of Christ’s kingdom. The revivals which prevailed in the early part of the century and the consequent great expansion of aggressive Christian work, were in answer to his life-long prayers, as well as those of all other Christians; and he entered heartily, from the first, into all measures undertaken for the more rapid spread of the gospel. He was greatly interested in the formation of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and read the Missionary Herald, with interest from its first publication, until his death. The formation of the Bible Society, Tract Society, Seaman’s Friend Society, Sunday School Society, American Home Missionary Society, etc., engaged his interest, and received his support. He made himself an honorary member of the A. B. C. F. M. near the close of his life, in accordance with the suggestion of his sister Sarah, whom he greatly valued, the wife of Rev. Joseph Washburn, and afterward of Dea. Porter, both of Farmington, Ct., by the contribution to Foreign Missions, at one time, of one hundred dollars.