ethan allen homestead history
| Ethan
Allen, who has become a folk hero in Vermont,
was an unusually flamboyant backwoodsman-turned-statesman from Connecticut.
He was one of the early inhabitants of Burlington, where he lived
on his property in the Winooski
River
intervale
from 1787 until his death in 1789. He made a very significant contribution
to the early history of Vermont, at that time called the
New
Hampshire Grants,
when
the territory constituted the northern frontier of the New England
colonies, and of the emerging nation. |
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| He is best known for the capture of Fort Ticonderoga at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War and his leadership of the Green Mountain Boys. He was also a Deist and philosopher. Towards the end of his life he published Reason the Only Oracle of Man, rewritten from a manuscript he and Dr. Thomas Young, a Deist friend and mentor from Connecticut, had written together years earlier. | ||
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As is so often the case with folk heroes, around whom myths grow up during and after their lives, it is hard to form an accurate picture of Ethan Allen. Indeed, there is no portrait of him! By most accounts, he was over six feet tall, unusual for that time, and, according to contemporary evidence, was a confrontational, even belligerent person, yet had that power to attract the most devoted and loyal followers. Persistent and independent like many frontiersmen, Ethan was, however, unusually well-read and articulate for a settler of the northern frontier. |
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