page_title: Ethan Allen
section_title: New Hampshire Grants
hierarchical_section_title: Ethan Allen / New Hampshire Grants
caption_attribution_description: English: Catamount Tavern, Bennington, Vermont
context_page_description: Ethan Allen was a farmer, businessman, land speculator, philosopher, writer, lay theologian, American Revolutionary War patriot, and politician. He is best known as one of the founders of Vermont and for the capture of Fort Ticonderoga early in the Revolutionary War. He was the brother of Ira Allen and the father of Frances Allen.
  Allen was born in rural Connecticut and had a frontier upbringing, but he also received an education that included some philosophical teachings. In the late 1760s, he became interested in the New Hampshire Grants, buying land there and becoming embroiled in the legal disputes surrounding the territory. Legal setbacks led to the formation of the Green Mountain Boys, whom Allen led in a campaign of intimidation and property destruction to drive New York settlers from the Grants. He and the Green Mountain Boys seized the initiative early in the Revolutionary War and captured Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775. In September 1775, he led a failed attempt on Montreal which resulted in his capture by British authorities. He was imprisoned aboard Royal Navy ships, then paroled in New York City, and finally released in a prisoner exchange in 1778.
context_section_description: New Hampshire Governor Benning Wentworth was selling land grants west of the Connecticut River as early as 1749, an area to which New Hampshire had always laid claim. Many of these grants were sold at relatively low prices to land speculators, who made land kick-backs to Wentworth. In 1764, King George issued an order resolving the competing claims of New York and New Hampshire in favor of New York. New York had issued land grants that overlapped some of those sold by Wentworth, and authorities there insisted that holders of the Wentworth grants pay a fee to New York to have their grants validated. This fee approached the original purchase price, and many of the holders were land-rich and cash-poor, so there was a great deal of resistance to the demand. By 1769, the situation had deteriorated to the point that surveyors and other figures of New York authority were being physically threatened and driven from the area.
  A few of the holders of Wentworth grants were from northwestern Connecticut, and some of them were related to Allen, including Remember Baker and Seth Warner. In 1770, a group of them asked him to defend their case before New York's Supreme Court. Allen hired Jared Ingersoll to represent the grant-holder interest in the trial, which began in July 1770 and pitted Allen against politically powerful New York grant-holders, including New York's Lieutenant Governor Colden, James Duane who was prosecuting the case, and Robert Livingston, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who was presiding over the case. The trial was brief and the outcome unsurprising, as the court refused to allow the introduction of Wentworth's grants as evidence, citing their fraudulently issued nature. Duane visited Allen and offered him payments "for going among the people to quiet them". 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 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. He acquired grants from Wentworth to about 1,000 acres (400 ha) in Poultney and Castleton prior to the trial.
caption: The Catamount Tavern in the 19th century
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