John Boardman (1758–1813) was a merchant and one of the earliest settlers of

Troy, New York Troy is a city in the U.S. state of New York and the county seat of Rensselaer County. The city is located on the western edge of Rensselaer County and on the eastern bank of the Hudson River. Troy has close ties to the nearby cities of Albany a ...

. Boardman was born in Preston, Litchfield Country, Connecticut, the fourth of a brood of six. In 1788, he acquired a plot in farmland that had been subdivided by the Van der Heyden family in the previous year. Other settlers of his generation included Stephen Ashley, Benjamin Covell, Samuel Gale, Benjamin Smith, Philip Heartt, Anthony Goodspeed, Mahlon Taylor, Ephraim Morgan, and Ebenezer and Samuel Wilson. As one writer later reminisced of these pioneers, “they were few in number, and possessed but little substance; but they were men of courage and activity…. They were men of shrewd minds. They saw that water power here abounded – and that River navigation to this point was easy. They judged that with its natural advantages, their enterprise could not fail.” On the night of January 5, 1789, Boardman and other residents gathered in Ashley’s Inn voted to give the settlement a new designation. Henceforth the town of Vanderheyden would be known as Troy. Thanks to the industry of entrepreneurs like Boardman, Troy grew steadily. It was incorporated as a town in 1791, and upgraded to a village in 1801. Three years after his death, Troy was chartered as a city. Boardman formed several mercantile partnerships in the course of his career. Morgan, Boardman & Coit was established as early as 1790, and his enterprise went through further permutations as Morgan & Boardman, and later Boardman & Hillhouse. Boardman built a house on the west side of Second Street in Troy on the Hudson River in New York. He served in a number of official capacities in the early history of Troy. He was among the first fire wardens, appointed to the office in 1799, 1801, and 1803, and served as assessor for the Second Ward in 1806. In 1800 he married Clarinda Starbuck of

Nantucket Nantucket () is an island about south from Cape Cod. Together with the small islands of Tuckernuck and Muskeget, it constitutes the Town and County of Nantucket, a combined county/town government that is part of the U.S. state of Massachuse ...

(1773-1846), the daughter of Daniel and Mary (Folger) Starbuck of Nantucket. Through the Folger side of the family, Clarinda was related to both

Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading inte ...

and

Lucretia Mott Lucretia Mott (''née'' Coffin; January 3, 1793 – November 11, 1880) was an American Quaker, abolitionist, women's rights activist, and social reformer. She had formed the idea of reforming the position of women in society when she was amongs ...

. Although Clarinda had been raised a

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

, she had joined the

Presbyterian Church Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...

when she married John, who was himself of

Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic Church, Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become m ...

stock. Their son,

Henry Augustus Boardman Henry Augustus Boardman (January 9, 1808 – June 15, 1880) was an American minister and author. Boardman was born in Troy, N Y, January 9, 1808. His parents were John Boardman and Clarinda (Folger) Starbuck, and he often said that he was the pr ...

(1808-1880) would become pastor of the

Tenth Presbyterian Church Tenth Presbyterian Church is a congregation of approximately 1,600 members located in Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Tenth is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), a denomination in the Reformed (Calvi ...

in Philadelphia, and a denominational leader.John DeWitt, D.D., “Rev. Henry A. Boardman, D. D.” in William Mason Cornell, ''Cornell's Lives of Clergymen, Physicians and Eminent Business Men of the Nineteenth Century: With Recollections of the Olden Time'' (Boston: Howard Gannett, 1881), pp. 194-216.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Boardman, John 1758 births 1813 deaths People from colonial Connecticut People from Troy, New York People from Preston, Connecticut Businesspeople from New York (state) American merchants