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