ic coast. By
the census of 1880, the assessed valuation of real estate in this county
was $4,737,807; of personal property $1,896,886. Total $6,634,693. It
embraces 3,213 farms; 146,480 acres of improved land, valued, including
buildings and fences at $4,403,985; affording an annual production,
valued at $759,560. The population was 24,326 of whom 23,756 were
natives of Maine.

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 sev