Boardman Centre
Boardman Township, Boardman Township, Ohio
Marker Inscription
Range 2 Town 1 Connecticut Western Reserve Founded by Elijah Boardman In 1798
The Story
In 1798, this corner of northeastern Ohio was surveyed frontier at the edge of the Connecticut Western Reserve—the "New Connecticut" that Connecticut retained when it ceded its other western land claims to the young United States. The cryptic "Range 2, Town 1" is survey shorthand from that grid, the system by which the Reserve was carved into townships and sold to New England investors. Elijah Boardman, a Connecticut merchant and land speculator (and later U.S. senator), purchased this township and lent it his name, drawing Yankee settlers west to build farms and a town center on land only recently opened to them.
Why it matters
Boardman Centre marks how New England reached into the Ohio country after the Revolution, transplanting Connecticut's people, town-founding habits, and place-names onto the frontier—one township in the vast westward migration that turned the Northwest Territory into the American heartland.
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Related people
- · Elijah Boardman
Related events
- · Settlement of the Connecticut Western Reserve
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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