The pre-Revolutionary War history of Vermont centered on a border dispute between the colonies of New York and New Hampshire. It is a complicated but colorful history, one that has been populated through the years with stories of greedy royal governors, show trials by corrupt provincial officials, land hungry settlers, shady land speculators, lawless vagabonds […]
Vermont’s Ebenezer Allen: Patriot, Commando and Emancipator by Glenn Fay Jr. (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2021) Ethan Allen, the militia leader who shares credit for taking Fort Ticonderoga early in the Revolution, is the most recognizable historical figure from early Vermont history. His brother Ira is also famous for his association with the Green Mountain […]
If the gunfire at Lexington and Concord was the “shot heard round the world,” the phrases in the Declaration of Independence were the words read around the world. In the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson declared America an independent nation, rooting his ideas in political theory and justifying them with a list of grievances.[1] After the Declaration was […]
Fort Tryon Park, sixty-seven acres just north of the George Washington Bridge in Manhattan, is a bucolic refuge among the skyscrapers of New York City. Children climb in the Javits’ playground; teens toss snowballs in the Heather Garden; tourists queue to visit the medieval art on display at the Cloisters museum; a bundle of black […]
The Rebel and the Tory: Ethan Allen, Philip Skene, and the Dawn of Vermont by John J. Duff, H. Nicholas Muller III, and Gary G. Shattuck (Vermont Historical Society: Barre, VT, 2020) Every polity requires a founding saga to help form its societal identity. Oft recounted, Vermont’s foundation story starts with a group of democratic, yeoman […]
Immediately following the taking of Fort Ticonderoga by Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys in early May 1775, Capt. John Visscher raised a company of seventy-five men, at the request of the Albany County (New York) Committee of Safety, Correspondence, and Protection. His company was ordered to proceed to that post and defend it […]
