David M. Flanders, a lifelong Chilmark resident and well-known Vineyard figure who was above all things a man of the land, died on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 27, just after tending his cows in the pasture. He was 76.

A country realtor, farmer, patriot and quiet advocate for the Island, David traced his family roots back for more than 400 years.

“I suppose now I’m an old-timer,” he told the Martha’s Vineyard Magazine in a rare interview in 1991.

He had been married to his wife, Fran, for 52 years.

David Mayhew Flanders was born at the Martha’s Vineyard Cottage Hospital on July 30, 1932, the son of Oscar Bradley and Hope Rosalie Mayhew Flanders of Chilmark.

He attended the Menemsha School and graduated from the Tisbury High School in 1950. As a boy, he spent his summers digging potatoes for ten cents an hour. He later took up construction, building houses with the late Herbert Hancock, a Chilmark selectman for many years. He earned money by scalloping and fishing and helping his father in the family moving business.

He was also a volunteer with the Chilmark fire department and it was in the line of duty where he met his future wife Frances Todd Crandell of Wellesley. On July 4, 1952, a call came into the fire station; three children had set off fireworks in a small Chilmark field. David responded to the call, and after putting out the fire he got a glimspe of Fran, the children’s nanny. He did not talk to her that night, but waited until the second time he saw her, down at the Menemsha docks. She had just finished her freshman year at Wellesley College. A summer romance followed.

In 1953, Mr. Flanders was drafted into the United States Army. He was stationed at Fort Dix in New Jersey during the Korean conflict and worked as the base postal master. He left the army in 1955 as a corporal. The following year, he and Frances were married in Wellesley, a few days after she graduated from college.

Following the wedding, they moved to Chilmark. Mr. Flanders began working at Flanders Real Estate, the company his grandmother founded in 1927. Fran worked as the bookkeeper for the company, and like her husband she wore other hats as well, working as a schoolteacher at the regional high school, as a geologist and running an antique shop in Menemsha. They had three daughters: Christine, Elizabeth and Julianna.

David was a tireless realtor who knew and understood the business literally from the ground up. He brokered many deals. He also worked quietly on many conservation acquisitions over the years, including the Vanderhoop homestead in Aquinnah, Peaked Hills Pasture and the Fleischman property on Middle Road in Chilmark. He helped put together the original sale of land to Jackie Onassis in Aquinnah.

He was an avid hunter and fisherman who came to farming a bit later in life.

“He gave me my start as a farmer,” recalled James Athearn, owner of Morning Glory Farm in Edgartown and 16th generation Islander. “I had been a social worker on the Island dreaming about farming — he saw me at the cattle show at the fair and leaned on the fence and said, ‘I hear you like farming. I need a man to work on my farm this winter.’

“So in the winter of 1972 I built barbed wire fences for his cows. He was learning about farming too. He said one time, ‘Ask your uncle how to plow.’ And I did, and Uncle Leonard told us how to do it.”

Mr. Athearn, who was just reappointed to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission this week, also said:

“He was a great character. I disagreed with him on land use issues sometimes. He saw the land need, he just saw it differently than I did.”

His childhood friend Everett Poole of Chilmark recalled:

“When we were kids, oh eight, ten years old, on stormy weekends we used to get together to play board games and it would be my cousin Matt, David and I. We were the three boys in Chilmark around that age. Of course it always ended up being Monopoly, and if we had not finished the game by the time we had to go home for supper that night, David would insist we save it so it could be continued the next Saturday or Sunday. He never left the Monopoly game until he won it.”

Mr. Flanders bought hundreds of acres well before the real estate market went through the roof, although he rarely sold his own land.

“David was a collector,” Mr. Poole said. “When we were kids we played a lot with lead soldiers — in order to have a bigger army than either Matt or I did, he used shotgun shells — expended ones. He had a huge collection of them and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are still in his cellar today.”

He was an excellent athlete and keen competitor who tried out for the Red Sox in his youth and played softball throughout his life. But the sport he relished most was horseshoes.

“The highlight of my athletic life was beating David in horseshoes a couple of years ago,” said Ron Rappaport, an Island native and prominent attorney. “David lived life the way he wanted to. He was a mentor to some of us. He was a friend to all of us — particularly those with four legs.”

He was a lifetime member of the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society and sat on the Chilmark lank bank advisory board. He was a founding member of the Chilmark conservation commission and an original member of the town planning board. He was a Chilmark fence viewer, an esoteric New England post that dates back to colonial times when disputes rose up between abutting landowners over fence lines.

“It was a way to settle these things before the court system was so widespread and there was no money involved,” he told the Martha’s Vineyard Magazine in the interview.

He sat on the boards of the Martha’s Vineyard Cooperative Bank, the Martha’s Vineyard National Bank and the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. He was a member of the Chilmark cribbage league and was a trustee of the Chilmark Community Church, where he and Fran attended services regularly.

He liked to travel and visited Nova Scotia, New Zealand and the Caribbean with his wife and family.

He practiced the Island way of life — often out the door before Fran got up in the morning to make rounds in his Chevy Suburban, a German Shepherd seated beside him. He would check in on his daughters, let out his cows and drive to Menemsha Texaco or the post office to catch up on the latest news.

On the day of his death, Mr. Flanders enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner at his home with family, friends and his dog Duke. After dinner, he and his daughters went out to tend the cows, and that is where he died.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by his daughters Christine Hope Fielder and her husband Evan Fielder of West Tisbury, Elizabeth Campbell-Welch and her husband Jim Welch of Chilmark and Julianna Flanders of Chilmark; grandchildren David, Bill and Bradley Fielder, Jessica and Mariah Campbell and Isabella Flanders Thorpe. He was predeceased by a brother, Richard, and a granddaughter, Amanda Campbell.

A funeral service was held on Monday at 1 p.m. at the Chilmark Community Church, followed by a graveside ceremony at Abel’s Hill cemetery with military honors and a reception at the Chilmark Community Center. Some 400 people attended on a sunny, breezy, unseasonably mild day.

Donations in his memory can be made to the Chilmark Community Church or the Chilmark Volunteer Fireman’s Association.

Julia Rappaport contributed to this story.