1670. Nominated assistant.
1662. Distributor of William’s estate.
1662. Appointed by Gen. Court on committee to pay certain taxes.
1665. Chairman of a committee appointed by the Legislature, to settle with the Indians the difficulty about the bounds of land near Middletown, “in an equitable way.”
1660. On a similar committee to purchase of the Indians Thirty Mile Island.
1665. Chairman of a committee of the Legislature to report on land, petitioned for by G. Higby.
1663. Appointed chairman of committee to lay out the bounds of Middletown.
He died just two hundred and twelve years ago in April, 1673. His estate was appraised by the selectmen of Wethersfield, May 2, 1673 at £742, 15s, about $4,000. His son Isaac then 31 years old is not named in the settlement of the estate, and had perhaps received his patrimony. He had ten children, seven sons and three daughters, of whom the youngest was six years old; he had three grandchildren, the children of his oldest son, Isaac. All his children received scriptural names, as was common in Puritan families. His descendants are now doubtless several thousands in number. Only a very small part, after two hundred and fifty years, of a man’s descendants bear his name. His daughters and their descendants, his sons’ daughters and their descendants, one-half, three-quarters, seven-eights, diverge from the ancestral name, etc., till but a thousandth part, after a few centuries retain the ancestral name, and those who retain it owe to a hundred others as much of their lineage as to him. Such is God’s plan; the race are endlessly interwoven together; no man liveth unto himself. But a few comparatively, of the descendants of Samuel Borman can now be traced. His own name, however, has been carried by them into the United States Senate; into the lower house of Congress; into many State Legislatures; to the bar and to the bench; into many pulpits, and into several chairs of collegiate and professional instruction. Yet these can represent but a few of his descendants who have been equally useful. Probably a larger number of them are still to be found in Connecticut than in any other state. Among them is the family of Rev. Noah Porter, D. D., LL. D., the President of Yale College, who married a daughter of Rev. Dr. N. W. Taylor. The prayers of Julian Borman for “her good sonne”—“her very loving sonne, Samuel Boreman” already reach, under the covenant promise of Him who remembers mercy to a thousand generations, a widely scattered family.
In the above letter the name is spelled both with and without the letter “e” after “r;” the letter “d” is not found until 1712. The letter “a,” was not inserted until 1750; so that the descendants of Samuel, may still bear all these names, Borman, Boreman, Bordman or Boardman, according to the generation at which the line traced, reaches the parent stock. It is said that the name, however spelled, is still pronounced “Borman,” at Wethersfield. The rise of Cromwell in England, the long Parliament, the Westminster Assembly, the execution of Charles the First, the establishment of the commonwealth, its power by sea and land, the death of the Protector, the restoration of Charles the Second, were events of which Samuel must have heard by letter from his brother and sisters, as well as in other ways. He doubtless had numerous kinsmen on the side of both his father and his mother, who were involved in these movements of the times in England. Perhaps Richard Boardman, one of the first two “Traveling Methodist Preachers on the continent,” who came here from England in 1769, was among the descendants.
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.