Read Ebook: Log-book of Timothy Boardman Kept on Board the Privateer Oliver Cromwell During a Cruise from New London Ct. to Charleston S. C. and Return in 1778; Also a Biographical Sketch of the Author. by Boardman Timothy Boardman Samuel Ward Contributor

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Transcriber's Notes: 1) Characters following ^ are supercripted-in the case of ^oClock, it is just the "o". 2) Inconsistent spellings and hyphenations have been left as printed.

LOG-BOOK OF TIMOTHY BOARDMAN;

KEPT ON BOARD THE PRIVATEER OLIVER CROMWELL, DURING A CRUISE FROM NEW LONDON, CT., TO CHARLESTON, S. C., AND RETURN, IN 1778;

ALSO,

ISSUED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE RUTLAND COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

ALBANY, N. Y.: JOEL MUNSELL'S SONS. 1885.

PREFACE

Under the auspices of the Rutland County Historical Society, is published the Log-Book of Timothy Boardman, one of the pioneer settlers of the town of Rutland, Vermont. This journal was kept on board the privateer, Oliver Cromwell, during two cruises; the second one from New London, Conn., to Charleston, S. C.; the third from Charleston to New London, in the year 1778. It seems that the Log-Book of the first cruise was either lost, never kept, or Mr. Boardman was not one of the crew to keep it. It was kept as a private diary without any view to its ever being published.

When this manuscript, on coarse, unruled paper, was brought to light, it came to the knowledge of the officers of the county historical society, who, at once, decided that it was a document of considerable value and should be published. Correspondence was accordingly opened with the Rev. Samuel W. Boardman, D.D., of Stanhope, New Jersey, a grandson of Timothy, to whom this document properly belonged, asking his permission to allow the society to publish it. The Reverend Doctor immediately gave his consent; and in his own words: "Supposed it was largely dry details. Still these may throw side lights of value, on the history of the times." At the same time he also consented to furnish a biographical sketch of his grandfather to be published with the Log-Book. Accordingly the sketch was prepared, but it proves to be not only a sketch, but a valuable genealogy of that branch of the Boardman family. This sketch was collected from many sources, mostly from manuscripts.

The Boardmans in Rutland county are all known as a strictly industrious, upright, religious, scholarly race; and they are so interwoven with the early history, business and educational interests of the county, that this document must meet with general favor and interest.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF DEA. TIMOTHY BOARDMAN.

Stanhope, New Jersey.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

There is still preserved a letter from England, written in a fine hand, with red ink, dated Obeydon? Feb. 5, 1641, and directed,

"to her very loveing sonne SAMUEL BOREMAN, Ipswich in New England give this with haste."

The letter is as follows:

"Good sonne, I have receaved your letter: whereby I understand that you are in good health, for which I give God thanks, as we are all--Praised be God for the same. Whereas you desire to see your brother Christopher with you, he is not ready for so great a journey, nor do I think he dare take upon him so dangerous a voyage. Your five sisters are all alive and in good health and remember their love to you. Your father hath been dead almost this two years, and thus troubleing you no further at this time, I rest, praying to God to bless you and your wife, unto whome we all kindly remember our loves.

Your ever loving mother, "JULIAN BORMAN."

This letter exhibits many of the characteristics of the Puritans to whom the Bormans belonged. They were intensely religious; this short letter contains the name of God three times and speaks of both prayer and praise. The Puritans were an intelligent people, reading and writing; this letter is a specimen of the correspondence carried on between the earliest settlers and their kindred whom they had left in England. They were an affectionate people, "remembering their loves" to one another; and praying, for one another, as this mother did for her son and his wife. This short letter has the word "love" four times.

They were a persistent people, those who came hither did not shrink from the hardships around them. They came to stay, and sent back for their friends. Samuel desired Christopher to follow him. Many of their families were large, there were at least nine members of this Puritan household. Samuel was born probably about 1610; he had emigrated from England in 1635 or 1636. His name is found at Ipswich, Mass., about 1637 where land was assigned to him. Ipswich had been organized in 1635 with some of the most intelligent and wealthy colonists. His father died after Samuel's emigration to America, in 1639. His wife's name was Mary; their oldest child, so far as we have record, was Isaac, born at Wethersfield, Ct., Feb. 3, 1642. He probably journeyed through the wilderness from Ipswich, Mass., which is twenty-six miles north of Boston, to Wethersfield, Ct., about one hundred and fifty miles, in 1639 or 1640.

It is possible that Christopher Boreman fought and perhaps fell in the army of the commonwealth. But why did so many of the early settlers, quickly leave the Atlantic coast for the Connecticut valley? Their first historians say there was even then "a hankering for new land." They wished also to secure it from occupation by the Dutch who were entering it. Reports of its marvelous fertility, says Bancroft, had the same effect on their imagination, as those concerning the Genesee and Miami have since exerted, inducing the "western fever," "Young man go West." The richness of the soil of the Wethersfield meadows has been celebrated as widely as the aroma of its onions. It is only three miles from Hartford and was for two centuries one of the most prominent communities in Connecticut. There was scarcely a more cultured society anywhere. "It were a sin," said the early colonists "to leave so fertile a land unimproved." The Pequod war had annihilated a powerful and hostile tribe on the Thames in 1637. Six hundred Indians perished, only two whites were killed. Connecticut was long after that comparatively safe from Indians. In 1639, the people formed themselves into a body politic by a voluntary association. The elective franchise belonged to all the members of the towns who had taken the oath of allegiance to the commonwealth. It was the most perfect democracy which had ever been organized. It rested on free labor. "No jurisdiction of the English monarch was recognized; the laws of honest justice were the basis of their commonwealth. They were near to nature. These humble emigrants invented an admirable system. After two centuries and a half, the people of Connecticut desire no essential change from the government established by their Puritan fathers." .

The newly married son to whom Julian Borman, the Puritan widow, with seven children, wrote from England in 1641, obviously partook of these common characteristics. He was soon recognized as a young man to be relied upon. "Few of the first settlers of Connecticut," says Hinman, author of the genealogy of the Puritans, "came here with a better reputation, or sustained it more uniformly through life."

In 1646-7-8. He was a juror.

Hinman says, few men, if any, in the colony, represented their own town for so many sessions.

At the same time the pioneer legislator in the Colonial General Court just established in the wilds of America, was aiding to lay Scriptural foundations for institutions of civil and religious liberty in the New World. He left a Thomas Boreman, perhaps an uncle, in Ipswich, Mass. During the thirty-seven years of his life, after his emigration, he saw new colonies planted at many points along the Atlantic coast. He saw the older colonies constantly strengthened by fresh arrivals, and by the natural increase of the population. Several other Boremans came to New England very early, some of whom may have been his kindred. He accumulated and left a considerable estate for that day, derived in part undoubtedly, from the increase in the value of the new lands, which he had at first occupied, and which he afterward sold at an advanced price. Some in every generation, of his descendants have done likewise; going first north, and east, and then further and further west. One of the descendants of his youngest son Nathaniel, now living, a man of distinguished ability, Hon. E. J. H. Boardman of Marshalltown, Iowa, is said to have amassed in this manner a large fortune.

Samuel Boreman died far from his early home and kindred. He was not buried beside father or mother, or by the graves of ancestors who had for centuries lived and died and been buried there; but on a continent separated from them by a great ocean. He was doubtless buried on the summit of the hill in the old cemetery at Wethersfield, in a spot which overlooks the broad and fertile meadows of the Connecticut river. In the same plot his children and grandchildren lie, with monuments, though no monument marks his own grave. In his childhood, he may have seen Shakespeare and Bacon. He lived cotemporary with Cromwell; and Milton, who died, a year after he was buried at Wethersfield. His wife Mary, the mother of us all, died eleven years later, in 1684, leaving an estate of ,300. As his body was lowered into the grave, his widow and ten children may have stood around it, the oldest, Isaac, aged 31, with his two or three little children; the second, Mary, Mrs. Robbins, at the age of twenty-nine; Samuel, Jr., twenty-five; Joseph twenty-three; John twenty-one; Sarah, eighteen; Daniel, fifteen; Jonathan, thirteen; Nathaniel, ten; Martha, seven. Most of these children lived to have families, and left children, whose descendants now doubtless number thousands. Isaac had three sons and one daughter and died in 1719, at the age of seventy-seven. Samuel had two sons and three daughters, and died in 1720, at seventy-two years of age. Daniel, then fifteen; from whom Timothy Boardman, the author of the Log-Book, was descended; had twelve children, nine sons and three daughters, and died in 1724, at the age of seventy-six. Jonathan had two sons and three daughters, and died September 21, 1712, at the age of fifty-one. Nathaniel married in Windsor, at the age of forty-four, and had but one son, Nathaniel, and died two months after his next older brother Jonathan, perhaps of a contagious disease, November 29, 1712; at the age of forty-nine. The descendants of Nathaniel are now found in Norwich, Vt., and elsewhere; and those of Samuel in Sheffield, Mass., and elsewhere. But the later descendants of the other sons, except Samuel, Daniel and Nathaniel, and of the daughters, I have no means of tracing. They are scattered in Connecticut and widely in other states. During the lives of this second generation occurred King Phillip's war, which decimated the New England Colonies, and doubtless affected this family with others. Within their time also, Yale College was founded, and went into operation first at Wethersfield, close by the original Borman homestead.

The writer of this has made sermons in the old study of Rector Williams, the president of the college, near the old Boardman house, which was standing in 1856, the oldest house in Wethersfield. The second generation of Boardmans, of course occupied more "new lands." Daniel, the fifth son of Samuel, owned land in Litchfield and New Milford, then new settlements, as well as in Wethersfield. Jonathan married in Hatfield, Mass.

The third generation, the grandchildren of Samuel, the names of twenty-nine of whom , all children of Samuel's five sons, are preserved; went out to occupy territory still further from home. We have little account however, except of the nine sons of Daniel, the seventh child of Samuel. Daniel the great-grandfather of Timothy, the author of the Log-Book, was married to Hannah Wright just a hundred years before the marriage of that great-grandson, June 8, 1683, while the war-whoop of King Phillip's Narraganset savages was still resounding through the forest. Of his twelve children, two sons, John and Charles, died before reaching full maturity, John at the age of nineteen, near the death of two of his uncles, Jonathan and Nathaniel, in 1712; and Charles the youngest child, at the age of seventeen, very near the time of his father's death, in 1724. One son died in infancy. Of his daughters, Mabel, married Josiah Nichols, and for her second husband John Griswold of New Milford; Hannah married John Abbe of Enfield; and Martha married Samuel Churchill of Wethersfield. Of his six surviving sons, Richard was settled at Wethersfield; he married in Milford, and had three children. His second son Daniel, born July 12, 1687, was graduated at Yale College in 1709, became the first minister of New Milford in 1712 and died in the ministry with his people, August 25, 1744. Hinman says: "He gave character and tone to the new settlement, by his devotion and active service."

He was a man of deep piety, and of great force of character. It is related that an Indian medicine man, and this Puritan pastor met by the sick-bed of the same poor savage. The Indian raised his horrid clamor and din, which was intended to exorcise according to their customs the evil spirit of the disease. At the same time Mr. Boardman lifted up his voice in prayer to Him who alone can heal the sick. The conflict of rival voices waxed long and loud to see which should drown out the other. Mr. Boardman was blessed with unusual power of lungs like his nephew Rev. Benjamin Boardman, tutor at Yale and pastor in Hartford, who for his immense volume of voice, while a chaplain in the Revolutionary army was called by the patriots the "Great gun of the gospel." The defeated charmer, acknowledged himself outdone and bounding from the bedside hid his defeat in the forest. Mr. Boardman died about the time his parishioners and neighbors were on the famous expedition to Cape Breton and the capture of Louisburg and when Whitfield's preaching was arousing the church. He was twice married and had six children. His second wife, the mother of all but his oldest child was a widow, Mrs. Jerusha Seeley, one of nine daughters of Deacon David Sherman of Poquonnoch. Their children were:

Rev. Daniel Boardman left but one son, the Hon. Sherman Boardman, who was but sixteen years old at the time of his father's death. From the age of twenty-one he was for forty-seven years constantly in civil or military office. He was for twenty-one sessions a member of the General Assembly of Connecticut, of which his great-grandfather Samuel, had been so long a member. His four sons, Major Daniel , Elijah, Homer, and David Sherman , were all members of the Connecticut Legislature, in one or both branches, for many years. Elijah was also elected a United States Senator, from Connecticut in 1821. He founded Boardman, Ohio, and died while on a visit there Aug. 18, 1823. His son, William W. Boardman , was speaker of the house of the Connecticut Legislature, and elected to Congress in 1840. He left an ample fortune, and his large and comely monument stands near the centre of the old historic cemetery of New Haven, Ct., in which city he resided. This branch of the family, second cousins of the author of the Log-Book, though descended from the Puritan pastor Daniel Boardman, are now associated with the Protestant Episcopal church.

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 ,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.

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.

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.

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