author
1783–1861
A Massachusetts town officer whose surviving work offers a rare, close-up look at everyday property and community life in mid-19th-century New England. His name is attached to a careful 1850 valuation of real estate in Acton, a record that has become useful to local historians and genealogists.
Born in 1783 and dying in 1861, Abraham Conant is remembered today through the historical record more than through a large body of published writing. Genealogical sources place his life in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, with ties to Stow and Acton.
The work most clearly connected to him is Valuation of Real Estate in the Town of Acton. November 2, 1850, published with Nathan Brooks and Jonathan B. Davis. Rather than a conventional book, it is a municipal assessment record: a detailed snapshot of land, buildings, and ownership in Acton at a particular moment in time.
That makes Conant interesting in a special way. His surviving publication preserves the texture of a New England town—who owned what, how property was valued, and how local government documented community life—giving modern readers a practical window into the world he knew.