87 Facts About Ethan Allen

Ethan Allen is best known as one of the founders of Vermont and for the capture of Fort Ticonderoga early in the Revolutionary War.

Ethan Allen was the brother of Ira Allen and the father of Frances Allen.

Legal setbacks led to the formation of the Green Mountain Boys, whom Ethan Allen led in a campaign of intimidation and property destruction to drive New York settlers from the Grants.

Ethan Allen was imprisoned aboard Royal Navy ships, then paroled in New York City, and finally released in a prisoner exchange in 1778.

Ethan Allen lobbied Congress for Vermont's official state recognition, and he participated in controversial negotiations with the British over the possibility of Vermont becoming a separate British province.

Ethan Allen wrote accounts of his exploits in the war that were widely read in the 19th century, as well as philosophical treatises and documents relating to the politics of Vermont's formation.

Ethan Allen was born in Litchfield, Connecticut Colony, the first child of Joseph and Mary Baker Ethan Allen, both descended from English Puritans.

The town of Cornwall was frontier territory in the 1740s, but it began to resemble a town by the time that Ethan Allen was a teenager, with wood-frame houses beginning to replace the rough cabins of the early settlers.

Joseph Ethan Allen was one of the wealthier landowners in the area by the time of his death in 1755.

Ethan Allen ran a successful farm and had served as town selectman.

Ethan Allen began studies under a minister in the nearby town of Salisbury with the goal of gaining admission to Yale College.

Ethan Allen was forced to end his studies upon his father's death.

Ethan Allen volunteered for militia service in 1757 in response to the French siege of Fort William Henry, but his unit received word that the fort had fallen while they were en route, and they turned back.

The French and Indian War continued over the next several years, but Ethan Allen did not participate in any further military activities and is presumed to have tended his farm.

The expansion of the iron works was apparently costly to Ethan Allen; he was forced to sell off portions of the Cornwall property to raise funds, and eventually sold half of his interest in the works to his brother Heman.

Ethan Allen's wife was rigidly religious, prone to criticizing him, and barely able to read and write.

The neighbor sued to have the animals returned to him; Ethan Allen pleaded his own case and lost.

Ethan Allen was called to court in Salisbury for inoculating himself against smallpox, a procedure that required the sanction of the town selectmen.

Ethan Allen met Thomas Young when he moved to Salisbury, a doctor living and practicing just across the provincial boundary in New York.

Young taught him a great deal about philosophy and political theory, while Ethan Allen shared his appreciation of nature and life on the frontier with Young.

Ethan Allen recovered the manuscript many years later, after Young's death.

Ethan Allen expanded and reworked the material, and eventually published it as Reason: the Only Oracle of Man.

Heman remained in Salisbury where he ran a general store until his death in 1778, but Ethan Allen's movements are poorly documented over the next few years.

Ethan Allen lived in Northampton, Massachusetts in the spring of 1766, where his son Joseph was born and where he invested in a lead mine.

Ethan Allen briefly returned to Salisbury before settling in Sheffield, Massachusetts with his younger brother Zimri.

Sheffield was the family home for ten years, although Ethan Allen was often absent for extended periods.

Duane visited Ethan Allen and offered him payments "for going among the people to quiet them".

Ethan Allen denied taking any money and claimed that Duane was outraged and left with veiled threats, indicating that attempts to enforce the judgment would be met with resistance.

Many historians believe that Ethan Allen took these actions because he already held Wentworth grants of his own, although there is no evidence that he was issued any such grants until after he had been asked to take up the defense at the trial.

Ethan Allen acquired grants from Wentworth to about 1,000 acres in Poultney and Castleton prior to the trial.

Ethan Allen was named their Colonel Commandant, and cousins Seth Warner and Remember Baker were captains of two of the companies.

Ethan Allen participated in some of the actions to drive away surveyors, and he spent much time exploring the territory.

Ethan Allen sold some of his Connecticut properties and began buying land farther north in the territory, which he sold at a profit as the southern settlements grew and people began to move farther north.

Ethan Allen detained two of the settlers and forced them to watch them burn their newly constructed cabins.

The settlers protested his language but Ethan Allen continued the tirade, threatening to send any troops from New York to Hell.

Ethan Allen joined his cousin Remember Baker and his brothers Ira, Heman, and Zimri to form the Onion River Company in 1772, a land-speculation organization devoted to purchasing land around the Winooski River, which was known then as the Onion River.

Ethan Allen spent much of the summer of 1774 writing A Brief Narrative of the Proceedings of the Government of New York Relative to Their Obtaining the Jurisdiction of that Large District of Land to the Westward of the Connecticut River, a 200-page polemic arguing the position of the Wentworth proprietors.

Ethan Allen had it printed in Connecticut and began selling and giving away copies in early 1775.

Ethan Allen traveled into the northern parts of the Grants early in 1775 for solitude and to hunt for game and land opportunities.

Two small companies were detached to procure boats, and Ethan Allen took the main contingent north to Hand's Cove in Shoreham to prepare for the crossing.

Ethan Allen asserted his right to command the expedition, but the men refused to acknowledge his authority and insisted that they would follow only Allen's lead.

The only casualty had been a British soldier who became concussed when Ethan Allen hit him with a cutlass, hitting the man's hair comb and saving his life.

Ethan Allen, likely both stubborn in his determination, and envious of Arnold, persisted.

Rather than attempt an ambush on those troops, which significantly outnumbered his tired company, Ethan Allen withdrew to the other side of the river, where the men collapsed with exhaustion and slept without sentries through the night.

Ethan Allen attempted correspondence with the people of Quebec and with the Indians living there in an attempt to sway their opinion toward the revolutionary cause.

Ethan Allen went to Ticonderoga to join Schuyler, while Warner and others raised the regiment.

Brothers Ira and Heman were given command positions, but Ethan Allen was not given any position at all in the regiment.

The people of the Grants were tired of the disputes with New York, and they were tired of Ethan Allen's posturing and egotistic behavior, which the success at Ticonderoga had enhanced.

General Carleton, alerted to Ethan Allen's presence, mustered every man he could, and, in the Battle of Longue-Pointe, scattered most of Ethan Allen's force, and captured him and about 30 men.

Ethan Allen's capture ended his participation in the revolution until 1778, as he was imprisoned by the British.

Much of what is known of Ethan Allen's captivity is known only from his own account of the time; where contemporary records are available, they tend to confirm those aspects of his story.

Ethan Allen was kept in solitary confinement and chains, and General Richard Prescott had, according to Allen, ordered him to be treated "with much severity".

Ethan Allen wrote of the voyage that he "was put under the power of an English Merchant from London, whose name was Brook Watson: a man of malicious and cruel disposition".

At first his treatment was poor, but Ethan Allen wrote a letter, ostensibly to the Continental Congress, describing his conditions and suggesting that Congress treat the prisoners it held the same way.

The people of Cork, when they learned that the famous Ethan Allen was in port, took up a collection to provide him and his men with clothing and other supplies.

Ethan Allen then learned of the death of his young son Joseph due to smallpox.

Ethan Allen was arrested for violating his parole, and placed in solitary confinement.

Ethan Allen was admitted to General John Campbell's quarters, where he was invited to eat and drink with the general and several other British field officers.

Ethan Allen stayed there for two days and was treated politely.

Ethan Allen's services were never requested, and eventually the payments stopped.

The death of Heman, with whom Ethan Allen had been quite close, hit him quite hard.

Ethan Allen then set out for Bennington, where news of his impending return preceded him, and he was met with all of the honor due to a military war hero.

Ethan Allen wrote of this homecoming that "we passed the flowing bowl, and rural felicity, sweetened with friendship, glowed in every countenance".

Ethan Allen spent the next several years involved in Vermont's political and military matters.

Ethan Allen was appointed to be one of the judges responsible for deciding whose property was subject to seizure under the law.

Ethan Allen was so zealous in these efforts that they included naming his own brother Levi, who was apparently trying to swindle Allen and Ira out of land at the time.

Ethan Allen's pamphlet circulated widely, including among members of Congress, and was successful in casting the Vermonters' case in a positive light.

Ethan Allen reported that due to Vermont's expansion to include border towns from New Hampshire, Congress was reluctant to grant independent statehood to Vermont.

Between 1780 and 1783, Ethan Allen participated, along with his brother Ira, Vermont Governor Thomas Chittenden, and others, in negotiations with Frederick Haldimand, the governor of Quebec, that were ostensibly about prisoner exchanges, but were really about establishing Vermont as a new British province and gaining military protection for its residents.

Ethan Allen's publisher had forced him to pay the publication costs up front, and only 200 of the 1,500 volumes printed were sold.

Ethan Allen, after being promised land, traveled to the area and began stirring up not just Pennsylvania authorities but his long-time nemesis, Governor Clinton of New York, by proposing that a new state be carved out of the disputed area and several counties of New York.

Ethan Allen was approached by Daniel Shays in 1786 for support in what became the Shays's Rebellion in western Massachusetts.

Ethan Allen was unsupportive of the cause, in spite of Shays's offer to crown him "king of Massachusetts"; he felt that Shays was just trying to erase unpayable debts.

Ethan Allen was threatened with debtors' prison on at least one occasion, and was at times reduced to borrowing money and calling in old debts to make ends meet.

Ethan Allen frequented the tavern there, and began work on An Essay on the Universal Plenitude of Being, which he characterized as an appendix to Reason.

Ethan Allen affirmed the perfection of God and His creation, and credited intuition as well as reason as a way to bring Man closer to the universe.

Ethan Allen died at home several hours later, without ever regaining consciousness.

Ethan Allen was buried four days later in the Green Mount Cemetery in Burlington.

Ethan Allen was the 7th graduate, a member of the Class of 1804, and served until 1813.

Ethan Allen was the 22nd graduate, a member of the Class of 1806, and served until 1821.

Two of his grandsons were Henry Hitchcock, Attorney General of Alabama and Ethan Allen Hitchcock, served as a Union Army general in the American Civil War.

Sometime in the early 1850s, the original plaque marking Ethan Allen's grave disappeared; its original text was preserved by early war historian Benson Lossing in the 1840s.

Ethan Allen's spirit tried the mercies of his God, in whom he alone believed and strongly trusted.

Alexander Graydon, with whom Ethan Allen was paroled during his captivity in New York, described him like this:.

The Spirit of Ethan Allen III is a tour boat operating on Lake Champlain.

The Ethan Allen Express, an Amtrak train line running from New York City to Burlington, Vermont, is named after him.

The Ethan Allen School was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.