Ethan Allen and his "Green Mountain Boys"

Ethan Allen

Ethan Allen, (1738-89), patriot of the American Revolution, leader of the Green Mountain Boys, and champion of statehood for Vermont.

Allen was born on January 21, 1738, in Litchfield, Connecticut. In 1769 he moved to the region known as the New Hampshire Grants, comprising present-day Vermont. After settling in Bennington, he became prominently involved in the struggle between New York and New Hampshire for control of the region. Following rejection by the New York authorities of an appeal that the region be established as a separate province, Allen organized a volunteer militia, called the Green Mountain Boys, to resist and evict proponents of the New York cause. He was thereupon declared an outlaw by the royal governor of New York.

At the outbreak of the American Revolution, Allen and his force offered their services against the British. On orders from the Connecticut legislature, he, the Connecticut soldier Benedict Arnold, and a contingent of the Green Mountain Boys captured Fort Ticonderoga early in the morning of May 10, 1775. Allen demanded surrender from the British commander "in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." Subsequently, as a member of the army of General Philip John Schuyler, he rendered valuable service in the American military expedition against Canada. He was taken prisoner near Montréal in September 1775 and held in confinement until exchanged in 1778. Following his release by the British, he returned to his home and was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army and major general of militia.

In 1778 Allen appeared before the Continental Congress in behalf of a claim by Vermont for recognition as an independent state. With his brother Ira Allen and other Vermonters he devoted most of his time thereafter to the territorial dispute. He negotiated with the governor of Canada between 1780 and 1783, ostensibly to establish Vermont as a British province. On the basis of this activity he was charged with treason, but, because the negotiations were demonstrably intended to force action on the Vermont case by the Continental Congress, the charge was never substantiated. He wrote a Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen's Captivity (1779). Allen died in Burlington, Vermont, on February 12, 1789.

The Green Mountain Boys was a name applied to a group of soldiers from Vermont who fought in the American Revolution (1775-1783). They took their name from the Green Mountains in Vermont. In 1775, on the verge of war, the Green Mountain Boys, led by Ethan Allen and Seth Warner, with reinforcements from Massachusetts and Connecticut, seized British-held forts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point on Lake Champlain in New York. In 1777 they helped win the Battle of Bennington in Vermont.
The Green Mountain Boys were originally organized by Allen before the revolution to oppose the claims of the New York government to Vermont territory. They repeatedly harassed New Yorkers and, after the war, declared Vermont an independent republic. When New York relinquished its claims to the land, Vermont applied for statehood and in 1791 became the 14th state.

Monument to the Green Mountain Boys.
Erected by the Ann Storey Chapter, DAR, 1915.

(See Bibliography below)

| Back to Timeline | or click on your browser's "back to previous page" button

Author: George Billias
Bibliography: Allen, Ethan, Reason, the Only Oracle of Man (1784); Jellison, Charles A.; Ethan Allen: Frontier Rebel (1969; repr. 1983); "Allen, Ethan" Encarta Encyclopedia '99. © 1993-1998 Microsoft Corporation.