The Biographical Dictionary of America/Allen, Ethan

ALLEN, Ethan, soldier, was born in Litchfield, Conn., Jan. 10, 1737, son of Joseph and Mary (Baker) Allen. His first American ancestor, Samuel Allen, came to Chelmsford in 1632. Ethan's father was a farmer in poor circumstances, and the son had few advantages for obtaining an education, although it appears to have been his ambition to study law. He engaged in iron smelting at Salisbury, Ct., and in developing a tract of land in Mine Hill, Roxbury, about 1762-'64. At the age of twenty-six years he, with four brothers, Heman, Hebar, Ira, and Levi, went to the Vermont colony to locate lands in the New Hampshire grants, they finally settling at Bennington. He appears to have also lived at Arlington, Sutherland, and Tinmouth. He at once became interested in the dispute between New York and New Hampshire, over the possession of the territory settled under the New Hampshire land grant, and which became the state of Vermont. He espoused the claims of New Hampshire so vigorously that in 1770 he was sent as agent to Albany to represent the question as it appeared to the actual settlers. In one of his pamphlets he wrote: "The transferring and alienation of property is a sacred prerogative of the owner — kings and governors cannot intermeddle therewith; common sense teaches common law." The decision of the court being adverse to New Hampshire, he was advised to go home and make the best terms he could for the settlers. His reply was: "The gods of the valleys are not the gods of the hills." He was offered land grants for himself, and office under the New York authority, which he spurned. New Hampshire practically abandoned the settlers, and Allen advocated armed resistance, and was chosen colonel of the regiment that became the historic "Green Mountain Boys," and of which Seth Warner, Remember Baker, Robert Cochrane and Gideon Olin were captains. In this capacity he made it his twofold duty to defend the settlers from the sheriff of Albany county, who came repeatedly with from three hundred to seven hundred men to dispossess the farmers, and to eject New York settlers from the territory which was now without government, except that administered by the militia, and which Allen humorously described as, "Chastisement with the twigs of the wilderness, the growth of the land they coveted." Allen was declared an outlaw, for whose capture the governor of New York, in 1771-72 had offered a reward of £150. He evaded arrest, although he actually rode to Albany, went to the principal hotel, where he was known, called for and drank a punch, and, in the presence of the sheriff and a gathering throng, mounted his horse and safely road away with a parting huzza for the Green Mountains. In 1774 he was one of the principal advocates in a scheme to form a new colony, to stretch from the Green Mountains west, north of the Mohawk river to the shores of Ontario, with Skenesborough (now Whitehall) as the capital, and Philip Skene as the governor. Skene had gone to England to urge the project, when the war of the revolution brought the matter to a close. Allen was one of the first to espouse the cause of the colonists, and in March, 1775, and before the massacre of Westminster, had determined to capture Fort Ticonderoga, which he accomplished twenty-one days after the battles of Lexington and Concord, and without a commission from the Continental Congress, which, in fact, had not yet convened. With a force of less than one hundred "Green Mountain Boys" the garrison was surprised just at daybreak, aroused, and ordered to surrender "in the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." When Congress convened, it tendered Colonel Allen a formal vote of thanks for his gallant exploit. The capture of Ticonderoga was followed by that of Skenesborough, and Crown Point immediately after, and in less than a week the entire country around Lake Champlain was in the possession of the revolutionists. This opened up a direct route to Canada, and Allen on May 29 wrote to Congress: "The Canadians (all except the noblesse), and also the Indians, appear at present to be very friendly with us, and it is my humble opinion that the more vigorous the colonists push the war against the king's troops in Canada, the more friends we shall find in that country." He said with one thousand five hundred men and a proper train of artillery he could take Montreal. Then "there would be no insuperable difficulty to take Quebec and set up the standard of liberty in the extensive province, whose limit was enlarged purely to subvert the liberties of America." He advanced his views with force and had many earnest advocates. He wrote to the Indians, calling them "brothers and friends," asked the merchants of Montreal to open trade with the colonists, and issued a proclamation to the French people of Canada appealing to them not to take up arms against the colonists. He went to Philadelphia and Albany to urge the scheme in the continental and provincial congresses, and the New York congress finally authorized the raising of a regiment of "Green Mountain Boys" to be officered from their own choosing. This called for a meeting of the town's committees to elect officers instead of the soldiers themselves, and much to the chagrin of Allen the choice fell upon Seth Warner by a vote of forty-one to five. General Schuyler immediately after sent Allen on several expeditions to arouse the people of Canada to support the revolutionary cause, and if possible bring about an insurrection. In one of these expeditions he was taken prisoner at Montreal, Sept. 24, 1775, and remained in confinement at Falmouth, England; Halifax, Nova Scotia; and New York, successively. He was paroled in November, 1777, after his arrival in New York, but not exchanged until May 3, 1778, when Colonel Alexander Campbell was released in exchange, and entertained Allen for two days at his home in New York. Allen then went to Valley Forge, where Washington made him his guest, and where he met Putnam, Gates, Lafayette, and other general officers. He was immediately commissioned by Congress brevet brigadier-general, and the legislature of his state made him major-general and commander-in-chief of the state militia. By this time the boundary disputes had broken out again, and he devoted himself to their settlement. As agent to Congress he was the prime factor in forcing upon that body the recognition of Vermont as a state. In this matter his motives and his loyalty to the colonists have been questioned, and were at the time open to reasonable doubt. He, however, appears to have had the confidence of Washington, and whatever lengths he went in way of deceiving the British with promises made to be broken, his whole life and especially his refusals to be bribed by the British when much larger and more alluring offers were held out, fully disproves any taint of treason. He resigned his commission as major-general, at the same time declaring himself ready "to serve the state according to his abilities" if ever necessary. He published his "Narration" in 1779; "Vindication of Vermont and Her Right to Form an Independent State" (1779); "Oracles of Reason," which he called "A Compendious System of Natural Religion," in 1784, and various pamphlets. His life has been written by Jared Sparks, Henry Hall, Hugh Moore, and H. W. DePuy. The legislature of Vermont of 1885 ordered a monument to be erected over his grave, a Tuscan column of granite forty-two feet high and four and one-half feet in diameter. A statue of Vermont marble sculptured by Mead stands in the vestibule of the state house at Montpelier, and another of Italian marble by the same sculptor in the rotunda of the capitol at Washington. A heroic statue designed by Peter Stevenson was unveiled at Burlington, July 4, 1893, and surmounts the monument erected in 1885. He married Mary, daughter of Cornelius and Abigail (Jackson) Brownson of Roxbury, Ct., who died in Sutherland, Vt., about 1783, and was buried at Arlington. On Feb, 9, 1784, he married Mrs. Frances Buchanan, the widowed daughter of Crean Bush, the Tory, who in the New York legislature had been largely instrumental in the passage of the act of outlawry against him. By this marriage one daughter and two sons were born. The daughter, after her father's death, entered a convent in Montreal, and the sons, Hannibal and Ethan A., became officers in the United States navy. He died at Burlington, Vt., Feb. 12, 1789.