USA > Vermont > Encyclopedia, Vermont biography; a series of authentic biographical sketches of the representative men of Vermont and sons of Vermont in other states. 1912 > Part 1
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62
س بالصبار ب٠٧٤٩
1
Gc 974.3 D66e 1180288
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01188 0694
..
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center
http://www.archive.org/details/encyclopediaverm00dodg
ENCYCLOPEDIA
VERMONT BIOGRAPHY
A Series of Authentic Biographical Sketches of the Representative Men of Vermont and Sons of Vermont in other States
1912
Compiled and Edited by PRENTISS C. DODGE
BURLINGTON, VERMONT: ULLERY PUBLISHING COMPANY
1912
COPYRIGHT 1912 ULLERY PUBLISHING COMPANY
ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE CAMPBELL ART COMPANY ELIZABETH, N. J.
PRINTED AND BOUND BY FREE PRESS PRINTING COMPANY BURLINGTON. VT.
1180288
Kolin O Mend ..
79/11/2 humaine
D. R. Spaight _2.0
CONTENTS
Page
Introduction, by Joseph A. DeBoer 4 The Founders 6
The Governors
27
Senators in Congress
55
Representatives in Congress 63
Judges of the Supreme and Superior Courts 79
Biographies of Vermonters
93
General Index
367
INTRODUCTION BY JOSEPH A. DeBOER
It is probably true that Vermont, as nearly as any spot upon the earth's crust, has been the scene of the most conspicuous action by men in all efforts to create, main- tam, and advance a true independence of person and state and upon principles fundamentally included in the term self-government. In fact, its history, upon utmost anal- ysis, discloses that no people organized as a state have more nearly attained to perfect sovereignty or maintained it under their constitution and political methods than the people of Vermont. The original stock, according to a census more than a century old, was composed almost wholly of English and Scotch, and was, therefore, Anglo- Saxon in its quality. That carried with it, considering only insignificant changes in its character, the virtues of their institutions, language, and literature, and, what is equally important, however derived, the fine character of Anglo-Saxon intellectual and moral life. Vermont in the American Revolution had reason for, and might have profited by, serving England; but its people, under a lofty leadership, saw fit to espouse the cause which, under Providence, has led to stupendous advances in the history of civilization and created a nation which outruns all others in its achieved results for man. Its people came of stock which held education, religion, freedom of person, and honest dealings in chief regard, and they were ready, in sustaining these assets of sovereignty, to sacrifice all.
R
From thence followed the conquest of the wilderness, the long-continued political strife with neighboring states, and finally with Congress itself, and from thence also came the glorious contribution which Vermont men made to the success of the Revolution by which the nation was estab- lished. The same spirit, animating the children of these forbears, sustained the subsequent wars of the United States and contributed materially to the existing unprece- dented position of our common history in the world at large. In fact, Vermont has been an extraordinary up- builder of the nation because of the intrinsic character of the people who compose it, their patriotism, thrift, and self-sacrificing works, and chiefly because they always made education and religion and fair dealing, as defined by laws and interpreted by courts, the basis of their public life.
For this reason any work which preserves the biog- raphy of some of its people in even partial form is valu- able and useful. As Stafford says:
"Mother of men, whom the green hills enthroned, From whose bright feet the rivers haste away, These of the ages are-we of a day, Yet we have loved thee, and thy love have known."
This work of Vermont biography has been under- taken with a view of supplying a useful contribution to the history of the state; and it is hoped that it will serve the purpose of all such works, that of conserving state traditions and of advancing the future, not only of Ver- mont, but of the nation at large.
Montpelier, Vt., April 15, 1912.
THE FOUNDERS
The men of Vermont in the beginning came for the most part from Massa- chusetts and Connecticut. They were of the true pioneer type- strong, deter- mned, enterprising men, who, with little of this world's goods, sought cheaper lands in the uninhabited Green Mountain wilderness, under grants from Benning Wentworth, the royal governor of New Hampshire. The first settlements of any importance were made after the close of the French and Indian war. France had ceded her American possessions to England, and the frontier English settlements were no longer in danger of being harassed and destroyed by predatory expedi- tions from Canada. Yet the new settlers in what is now Vermont, though they were thus freed from any fear of French aggression, soon found themselves in trouble with men of their own race. These troubles arose from the uncertain and often conflicting boundaries assigned to the various colonies by their charters from the crown. On the one hand, New Hampshire interpreted her charter as giving her all the territory as far west as the western boundary of Massachusetts and lying between the Massachusetts line on the south and Canada on the north. New York, on the other hand, claimed the Connecticut River as her eastern boundary, under the grant of the Province of New York made by Charles II to his brother, the Duke of York. Although, with the exception of Long Island, she had never, taken actual possession of any part of Connecticut or Massachusetts under this grant, yet now, after the lapse of a century, she asserted her right to the terri- tory of the present Vermont, and obtained a royal order which confirmed her claim.
By this time there were twoscore or more of scattered settlements in the southern part of Vermont, on both sides of the main range of the Green Moun- tains; and, under ordinary circumstances and with fair treatment, it would prob- ably have made little difference to the inhabitants of these remote hamlets to which of the two jurisdictions they should be attached. But New York, not content with the royal decision in favor of her territorial claims, began to treat the new settlers with signal injustice. She not only declared the grants obtained from the gover- nor of New Hampshire void and worthless, but she demanded that the settlers repurchase their lands under New York titles at a price many times the price they had already paid into the New Hampshire treasury. Some complied unwillingly, especially on the castern side of the range. By far the larger. part, however, re- fused, and declined to acknowledge the authority of New York; and, when that province attempted to enforce its demands, they resisted openly and for the most part effectively. Since New Hampshire afforded them no protection, they banded themselves together for their own defense into the organization known as "the Green Mountain Boys." Then for a dozen years there followed a desultory but prolonged conflict between this handful of rude frontiersmen and mountaincers and the officials of the great Province of New York. The latter endeavored to dis- possess the recalcitrant settlers from their homes, granting their lands over their heads to subjects of New York. But the settlers on the whole held their own well, using not only armed resistance on occasion, but other effectual means as well.
They applied becehen rods, or "the beech seal," as with grim humor they termed them, to the bare backs of individual offenders to good purpose. By one means or another they succeeded in defending their homes and their property, until at length the conflict was interrupted by the breaking out of the Revolution.
Perhaps the most important effect of the long controversy had been the gradual creation of a community of feeling and a politieal solidarity among the people of the Grants. Unaided by New Hampshire, in open conflict with New York, they had been without any settled system of government. Threatened by a common danger, however, they had, through the agency of committees of safety acting in harmony with one another, of informal meetings, and of delegated conventions from the several towns, been slowly welded into a people. In January, 1777, a convention, mecting as Westminster, passed a "Declaration of the Independence of the New Hampshire Grants," declaring them to be "a free and independent state," under the name of New Connecticut. In June of the same year, when Bur- goyne was moving southward along the Champlain valley to effeet a junction with Clinton on the Hudson and thus cut off New England from the rest of the colonies, an adjourned meeting of the same convention, held at Windsor, changed this name to Vermont, at the happy suggestion of Dr. Thomas Young, of Philadelphia, a friend and correspondent of the Allens and of other leading men in the Grants. The fol- lowing month, a constitution for the state was adopted, courts were established, and a council of safety appointed to direet affairs until the new state government could be put into operation, which was done in March, 1778, with Thomas Chittenden as the first governor.
Meanwhile, Vermont had taken its part in the defense of the colonies. On the morning of May 10, 1775, a party consisting chiefly of Green Mountain Boys. under the command of Ethan Allen, surprised Fort Ticonderoga, capturing more than a hundred cannon and a large quantity of ammunition and other military stores. This booty was later of great service to the American army besieging Boston. On the next day, Crown Point was captured by Seth Warner, and Skeenesborough, now Whitehall, by Capt. Samuel Herrick. During the following autumn and winter, the Green Mountain Boys took part in an invasion of Canada, which began with much promise of success, but ended disastrously, Allen being made a prisoner and sent to England. In 1777, Seth Warner covered the American retreat before the advance of Burgoyne from Canada, and fought the battle of Hubbardton on Vermont soil against a much larger force of British troops. At the suggestion of the Continental Congress, Vermont, notwithstanding her meager population, furnished a regiment for service in the Continental army; and, on Aug. 16, 1777, Vermont and New Hampshire forces, commanded by Gen. John Stark, won the battle of Bennington, which seriously crippled Burgoyne's army and has- tened his surrender at Saratoga two months later. Yet, in spite of her services to the common cause, Congress, largely through the efforts of the New York dele- gation, refused repeatedly to accede to Vermont's petitions for admission to the Union as a separate state. New Hampshire, too, revived her claims to Vermont territory; and Massachusetts laid claim to the southern portion of the state. Ver- mont retaliated on two several occasions by annexing bordering towns in both New Hampshire and New York. These East and West Unions, as they were known, were finally abandoned; but at least one session of Vermont's legislature was held on the New Hampshire side of the Connecticut.
In addition to refusing Vermont's appeal to be recognized as an independent state, and seriously considering her partition among the adjoining states, Congress
withdrew all Continental troops from Vermont's borders, leaving her frontiers defenseless against British attack, at a time when a fresh invasion along the Cham- plain highway was being organized in Canada. It was at this juncture, in 1780, that overtures were made by British emissaries for Vermont's return to British allegiance. The correspondence which ensued was conducted on the British side largely by General Haldimand, lieutenant-governor of the Province of Quebec, and is known as the Haldimand correspondence. On the Vermont side, it was conducted by, and known only to, a few of the leaders of the new state. That these men ever seriously contemplated a surrender of the state to the royal author- ity no one now believes, although Ethan Allen, angered at a fresh refusal of Con- gress to admit Vermont, once rashly declared that he would rather submit to the crown than fall under the dominion of New York. Abandoned, as they practically were, by Congress and the Continental army, facing in their defenseless condition the danger of a hostile invasion from the north, their object in thus parleying secretly with the enemy was to gain time and to protect themselves. They not only succeeded in this, but they saved the whole northern frontier of the country. Their chief representative in these negotiations was Ira Allen; and it was due to his adroit diplomacy and to the shrewdly noncommittal nature of his replies to the British advances that for three years an invading army was kept hanging idly on our borders, until at last peace was declared between England and her former colonies.
Yet Vermont's continued endeavors to be enrolled among the original states of the Union were in vain. For fourteen years she existed as practically an independent republic; and it was not until 1791 that she was finally admitted as the first new state to be added to the original thirteen.
HEROES OF EARLY VERMONT HISTORY
ALLEN, ETHAN. Born Litchfield, Conn., Jan. 10, 1737; son of Joseph and Mary (Baker) Allen; died Burlington, Feb. 12, 1789. In 1762, married Mary Bronson of Woodbury, Conn .; she died in 1783; they had four daughters and one son, of whom only the second daughter, Lucy Caroline, had issue, she marrying in 1789 Judge Samuel Hitchcock of Bur- lington; from her is descended, among others, the Hon. Ethan Allen Hitchcock, United States minister to Russia 1897, ambassador to Russia 1898, later in which year he became secretary of the interior, serving as such under Presidents McKin- ley and Roosevelt until 1907. In 1784, Ethan Allen married Mrs. Frances (Mon- tresor) Buchanan, daughter of Capt. John Montresor of the British army, and widow of Capt. John Buchanan of the British navy; they had three children, of whom the eldest, Fanny, died a nun in a convent at Montreal, P. Q .; after her is named the Fanny Allen Hospital near Burlington. The two sons of this mar- riage graduated from West Point and be- came officers in the United States army.
Allen came to the Grants in 1769, and almost immediately became prominent in the struggle against New York. He had been here but a few months when he was appointed an agent to defend the New York suits against the settlers, and went to New Hampshire to obtain copies of Governor Wentworth's commissions and instructions from the king. He engaged Jared Ingersoll of Connecticut as counsel, and in June, 1770, appeared at Albany to answer in a suit of ejectment by a New York claimant against a settler. The judge, Livingston, was a patentee under New York grants, interested directly or indirectly in 30,000 acres in Vermont. Most of the attorneys and court officers were similarly interested, and a fair con- sideration of the case was out of the ques- tion. Allen's documents and deeds under New Hampshire authority were excluded
as evidence, and the verdict was against him as arranged. Afterwards some gen- tlemen called on him at his hotel, and, representing how desperate the case was, urged him to go home and advise his friends to make the best terms they could. He coolly replied, "The gods of the val- leys are not the gods of the hills." Asked his meaning, he told them that if they would come to Bennington it should be made clear. He was offered land grants for himself and appointments to office un- der New York authority if he would use his influence, which was already recog- nized to be considerable, to support the New York side; but he spurned every attempt to induce him to betray the cause which had been intrusted to him.
Then began the long struggle against the jurisdiction of New York, during the first few years of which, after New Hampshire had abandoned them, the set- tlers were practically without govern- ment, except such as they improvised for their towns, acknowledging no other au- thority except such as they agreed to among themselves for mutual protection. The sheriff of Albany County repeatedly came with posses of from 300 to 700 men to dispossess the farmers, but always without success, doubtless because the bor- dering people of New York, from whom the posses had to be recruited, had no heart in the work. Allen was the leader of this resistance before and after it took organized form. When a military organ- ization was formed, towards the close of 1771, and Allen was elected colonel, with Seth Warner, Remember Baker, Robert Cochran, Peleg Sunderland, Gideon Olin. and others as captains, this regiment took the name of "Green Mountain Boys," in derision and defiance of Governor Tryon of New York, who had threatened to "drive the settlers from their farms into the Green Mountains." They repeat- edly drove off the New York authorities. They protected one another from arrest.
10
ENCYCLOPEDIA VERMONT BIOGRAPHY
[ALLEN
They took in hand and disciplined any- body that ventured to survey or occupy lands under New York titles. Their method was generally that of the "beech seal." or. as Allen humorously described it. a "chastisement with the twigs of the wilderness, the growth of the land they coveted."
The New York government. thus beaten at every point, in the winter of 1771-2 offered a reward of £150 for the capture of Allen and £50 for Baker and the others. Allen. Baker, and Cochran promptly met this with a counter proclamation, dated at Poultney. Feb. 5, 1772, reciting that "whereas James Duane and John Kempe of New York (prominent lawyers and ad- vocates of New York's claims) have by their menaces and threats greatly dis- turbed the public peace and repose of the honest peasants of Bennington and- the settlements to the northwa * * * any person that will apprehend ese common disturbers shall have £1 reward for Duane and £10 for Kempe.
In the opening days ( tionary struggle Allen w. most active of the patriots. patched messengers with letters. to win over the or side of the colonies,
*musst to neu- trality, and thereby he a. .. : important service which was felt throughout the war. Many of the red men were in- duced to come to Newbury, some to settle. and some to enter the colonial service as scouts and spies. Some were sent to Washington's camp, and some went to Canada. where they procured information that was highly valued by Washington and Schuyler. After hostilities had actual- ly begun with the bat.' Lexington and Concord, and the colonie were .fully launched into armed resistance, against the mother country, plans wery at once proposed for the taking of Fo: ; Tacon- deroga and the other stronghol " on the Champlain highway, along w oh any British invasions from Cana must necessarily come. Here again, Adon and his followers were in the lead. EanEn May, a party of Green Mountain navs were already assembled at Castleton ... r this enterprise under Allen's command, when a small force arrived from Conne " ;- cut and Massachusetts; also, Bener t Arnold, with a commission from the com-
the Revolu- among the e early dis- laracteristic ans to the
mittee of safety at Cambridge, Mass. Under this commission Arnold arrogantly claimed command of the expedition. The dispute for a time threatened to wreck the project. But the men from the Grants refused to serve under any lead- ers but their own; and Allen finally averted the difficulty by agreeing that, while he should command, Arnold might accompany hit at the head of the at- tacking party.
There was some confusion, and a par- tial miscarriage of plans to provide boats for crossing the lake; and, as dawn began on the morning of May 10, only 83 men had crossed, while Seth Warner, with the remainder of the 270 men composing the expedition, was impatiently waiting on the Vermont side. Allen saw that no time was to be lost. He drew his men up in line, told them it was a desperate attempt that was about to be made, and gave all who wished the privilege of with- drawing, but asked those who were will- ing to follow him into the fort to poise their fire-locks. Instantly every fire- lock was poised. "Face to the right," he cried, and he marched the men in three files, himself at the head of the center file, to the gate. A sentry at the wicker gate snapped his fuse at Allen, who pur- sued him with upraised sword into the parade ground of the garrison. Allen then formed his men so as to face the two barracks, and ordered three huzzas. An- other sentry, who had slightly wounded an officer with a bayonet thrust, and been struck in the head by Allen's sword, begged for quarter, which was granted on condition that he show the way to the quarters of the commanding officer, Cap- tain Delaplace, which were in the second story of a barrack. Allen strode up the stairway and summoned Delaplace to come out instantly or the whole garrison would be sacrificed ce appeared at the door, trouse. 1, and asked by what authority the demtod was made, eliciting the reply, "In the esame. of the great Jehovah and the Comkissatal Con- gress." The dazed com ....... Jant began further parley, but .Allen, with drawn sword, and voice and manner that ad- mitted of powtrifling, repeated his de- mand for amiimmediate surrender. Dela- place complied, and ordered his men to parade without arms. All were treated
11
THE FOUNDERS
ALLEN]
by Allen with characteristic generosity, but as prisoners of war. The capture was made on the very day of the first as- sembling of the Revolutionary Congress. It was the first surrender of the British flag, and had a great effect on the spirits of the country.
The capture was followed by a rapid succession of brilliant strokes .. On May 11, a detachment under Capt. Samuel Herrick captured Skeenesboro and the royalist Major Skeene, and seized a schooner and several bateaux there. War- ner with a detachment of one hundred men was dispatched to Crown Point, which he captured the same day, with thirteen men and sixty-one pieces of cannon. Allen and Arnold with their schooner and a bateaux sailed for St. Johns, where on the 18th Arnold, who in the schooner had outsailed Allen in the bateaux, captured a British armed sloop which was lying there. Thus, the whole of Lake Champlain within a little more than a week had fallen into the hands of the Revolutionists. With Ticonderoga were taken without a blow, not only a fortress that had cost Britain years of struggle and vast expenditures of blood and treasure, but stores of incalculable benefit to the army near Boston, includ- ing one hundred and twenty iron cannon, fifty swivels, ten tons of musket balls, three cart-loads of flints; a warehouse full of material for boat building, and a large quantity of other supplies and material.
Allen proposed at once to follow up his success with the capture of Canada, which was almost depleted of British forces, there only being about seven hundred regulars in the province, a large part if not an actual majority of whose people were ready to rise in sympathy. He wrote to Congress May 29: "The Canadians (all except the. noblesse) and also the In- dians appeare! " -t to be very friend- ly to us ; and JuinDie opinion that the more vis il- colonies push the war againstone king's troops in Canada, the more f-'ards we shall find in that country." Themuttered to "lay his life on it" that "with fifteen hundred men and a proper train of artillery," he would take Montreal. Then "there wrold be no in-" superable difficulty to take Quebec.". Lake Champlain, he shrewdly argued, was "the key of either Canada or our
country, according as which party holds the same in possession and makes a proper improvement of it. The key is ours as yet, and, provided the colonies would suddenly push an army of two or three thousand men into Canada, they might make a conquest of all that would oppose them.'
Allen flooded the Continental Congress and the provincial Congresses of New York and Massachusetts with letters and petitions and arguments in favor of his project. He and Warner went to Phila- delphia and Albany to urge the scheme on the continental and provincial Congresses. They were received with considerable honor at both places, though they were still placarded as outlaws by the New York government. The result, after long urging, was that the New York Congress, on the recor endation of the continental body, authe: ed the raising of a regi- ment of Grain Mountain Boys for serv- ice in the Continental army, to be com- manded by ancers chosen by themselves. Allen propos & himself as commander of this regiment?sand he was greatly morti- fied when a Committee of towns met at Dorset, July 27, 1775, to choose a lieu- tenant-color'ha! command the regiment, and elected " arher by a vote of 41 to 5. Notww. Landing the high merit as an officer always displayed by Warner, it is difficult to account for this action, in view of Allen's recent achievements, the large capacity he had shown, and the unanimity with which he had been re- garded as the leader only a few weeks before. Allen himself, in a letter to Gov- ernor Trumbull of Connecticut, attributed it to "the old farmers who do not incline to go to ware saying he was in the favor of the officer's of the army and the young Green- "Mountain Boys. He still hoped, however ro get a commission from the Conti .. entAl Congress. Remember Baker, Thomas ahochran, and Peleg Sunderland, who been captains in the Green Mountaish Boys from their organization, anh w / were on Allen's proposed list of capsans for the new regiment, also failed to be elected.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.