USA > Vermont > Windsor County > Windsor > The birthplace of Vermont; a history of Windsor to 1781 > Part 22
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? Id., 194.
1 H. Hall's Early Hist. Vt., 193.
3 B. H. Hall's Hist. Eastern Vt., 245, note.
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course of thirty days the people of Windsor began their prepara- tions for war.
To the enterprise and personal ambition of Ethan Allen is due the promptness with which the inhabitants of the New Hampshire Grants engaged in the war of the Revolution. Whether he was the first to conceive the plan of seizing Fort Ticonderoga may be doubted. Ira Allen, whose statements were likely to be prompted by expediency rather than by truth, said that Ethan Allen's activity was the result of a com- munication from the governor and council of Connecticut.1 The idea probably occurred to many in Massachusetts, Con- necticut, and New York at the same time; but Ethan Allen had the advantage of proximity and had followers whose train- ing and practices made them keen for an expedition of a sort to which they were accustomed, which gave promise of excitement and would yield no little popular applause. The raising of an adequate band was easy. Indeed, Allen reported that forty-six seasoned soldiers from Massachusetts Bay under the com- mand of Colonel James Easton participated in the undertaking.
At Fort Ticonderoga, as was ascertained by a spy, were a garrison of only thirty-one men2 under a captain and a lieu- tenant who were unaware that war had actually begun. Bene- dict Arnold, who had arrived on the New Hampshire Grants with a commission from Connecticut, had joined Allen and the two conferred on the subject of taking the fortress. Although Arnold's counsel on account of his military training may have been of value he was not permitted to take command. Allen was not the man to accept orders from anybody else if he could avoid doing so. This point being settled, with eighty-three men Allen and Arnold crossed Lake Champlain before break of day and surprised the fort. Not a gun was fired. Outnumbered by something like two to one the commandant at Ticonderoga, appearing at the head of the stairs in his nightshirt, replied to Allen's demand for surrender by asking the Green Mountain
1 Allen's History of Vt., p. 166.
2 Calculated from Dr. Williams's version (2 Williams Hist. Vt., 2d ed., p. 38). Other reports place the British garrison at somewhat over forty. Ethan Allen, writing four years after the capture of the fortress, put the number at fifty, in- clusive of officers. Timothy Dwight (Travels, vol. 2, p. 408) says forty-nine.
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chieftain's authority. Allen's answer has gone down into history: "In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Conti- nental Congress," announced Allen, in spite of the fact that he held a commission from neither source. It was a mouthfilling phrase, in typical American style, regardless of strict truth, but Oh ! so satisfying to the speaker and his followers and their posterity. It is an early and one of the best examples of the power or vitality of mere language in American affairs.
The seizure of Ticonderoga, followed by Seth Warner's taking of Crown Point and the capture of a small armed sloop on Lake Champlain (although Allen who hardly realized their importance characterized these events merely as a "private expedition") definitely spread the war to the New Hampshire Grants and New York. At New York City there convened a revolutionary provincial Congress of which Peter Van Brugh Livingston was elected president. Cumberland County, on account of its remoteness, failed to be represented at the organization meeting, but Colonel John Hazeltine as soon as possible assembled a county convention at Westminster for the purpose of choosing county delegates to subsequent sessions of such Congress.
This, the fifth Cumberland County convention of which partial record has been preserved, was a revolutionary body. Meeting on June 6, 1775, less than two months after their session which declared in favor of separation from New York, the delegates completely ignored the topic that so lately had agitated them and, instead, under the sobering prospect of war with Great Britain eagerly sought union with and help from New York. They declared their opposition to the acts of Parliament, their willingness to resist such acts with their lives and fortunes, and their acquiescence in the "Association" for the "liberties of America" as formulated by Isaac Low's committee in New York on April 29. Beyond this, and to their minds equally important, they sought to impress on the New York Congress that Cumberland County was "broken" in respect to civil authority, was defenceless for want of arms and ammunition and, though blessed with "many brave sol- diers," had nothing to fight with. They therefore besought not only New York's advice, but that "the honorable Provincial
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Congress ... from their generosity and goodness would do what in them lies for our relief in the premises." Their memo- rial to New York wound up by setting forth the election of Colonel John Hazeltine, Doctor Paul Spooner, and William Williams as Cumberland County's delegates to the New York Congress.1 It was a case of any port in a storm. Even New York was a welcome and needed ally.
Two Windsor settlers were members of that fifth Cumber- land County convention, viz., Joab Hoisington, and Benjamin Wait. If it be thought that the convention's declaration was a complete reversal of county sentiment, the following letter addressed to the president of the Provincial Congress of New York by William Williams, Joab Hoisington, and Benjamin Wait will, in its protestations of respect and affection for New York, strike the reader as even more remarkable:
Sir:
Westminster, June 9, 1775.
We, the subscribers, beg leave most humbly to shew, that being deeply impressed with the great importance of having a Regiment duly prepared, at the least notice, in this County, in order to keep under proper subjection Regulars, Roman Catholicks, and the Savages at the northward, as also to be ready at all times to defend our rights and privileges against Ministerial tyranny and oppression, seeing hostilities have al- ready commenced, and the sword is actually drawn in order to enforce certain tyrannick and arbitrary acts of the British Parliament, replete with horrour, and repugnant to every idea of British freedom; we, the loyal inhabitants of this County, glowing with true martial ardour, and willing, with the utmost cheerfulness and alacrity, to unsheath the sword in defence of the lives and properties of the good people of this ancient and truly respectable patriotic Colony of New York, beg leave to offer our services in the defence of this Province, and America in general. We therefore, with due submission, prepare cheer- fully and with the utmost gratitude to accept (if your honorable Congress shall think proper) commissions from this honorable Provincial Congress, viz., Colonel, Lieutenant-Colonel, and Major.
1 1 Gov. & Coun., 339-341.
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We determine to be entirely under the command and order of the Provincial Congress, hoping we shall truly merit the favors of said Congress, and be useful instruments in serving this ancient and honorable Colony of New York, as also the common grand American cause.
Sir your assisting us in this our humble request, and pre- senting to us the above-mentioned Commissions, would much oblige your most obedient humble servants
Wm Williams Benjamin Waite Joab Hoisington
To the Honourable P. V. B. Livingston, President of the Pro- vincial Congress
N.B. We hope to raise a Regiment of good active enter- prising soldiers in this County, which we hope will reflect honour on this Colony. The arrangement of said commissions we desire might be according to the following order: Major William Williams, our Delegate, to be first Colonel; Major Benjamin Wait, Lieutenant-Colonel; Captain Joab Hoisington Major.1
Significant as the foregoing letter is as indicating the changed sentiments of the settlers, the bold and uncompromising Ethan Allen was not far behind Williams, Wait, and Hoisington in making overtures to New York. Though he approached the subject circuitously and in better order his attitude became virtually the same as theirs. Under date of June 7, 1775, he had actually deigned to write to the Provincial Congress of New York recommending the raising of a regiment of rangers under his own leadership and the invasion of Canada.2 Three days later he and Seth Warner decided to visit the Continental Congress at Philadelphia. Here they succeeded in securing an appropriation with which to pay the men who had taken Ticon- deroga and Crown Point. At the same time John Hancock gave them a letter to the Provincial Congress of New York together with a resolution of the Continental Congress in favor
12 Am. Archives (4th Series), cols. 938-939.
2 3 Id., col. 893.
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of employing the Green Mountain Boys as soldiers in the war. With this resolution and Hancock's letter Allen and Warner waited upon the New York Provincial Congress in New York City. Though the latter body was naturally reluctant to deal with characters so notorious as the bearers of these documents a vote was passed on July 4, approving the raising of a battalion of five hundred Green Mountains Boys with leave to choose their own officers except field officers. Satisfied with this no inconsiderable achievement Ethan Allen was moved to write the Provincial Congress of New York the following letter:
Respectable Gentlemen:
Ticonderoga, 20th July, 1775.
When I reflect on the unhappy controversy which hath many years subsisted between the Government of New York and the settlers on the New-Hampshire Grants, and also contemplate the friendship and union that hath lately taken place between the government and those its former discon- tented subjects, in making a united resistance against minis- terial vengeance and slavery, I cannot but indulge fond hopes of reconciliation. To promote this salutary end, I shall con- tribute my influence, assuring your Honours, that your re- spectful treatment not only to Mr. Warner and myself, but to the Green Mountain Boys in general, in forming them into a battalion, are by them duly regarded, and I will be responsible that they will retaliate this favour by wholly hazarding their lives, if needs be, in the common cause of America.
I hope no gentleman in the Congress will retain any precon- ceived prejudice against me, as on my part I shall not against any of them; but as soon as opportunity may permit and the public cause not suffer thereby, shall hold myself in readiness to settle all former disputes and grievances on honorable terms.
I am, gentlemen, with the greatest respect
Your devoted, most obedient, humble serv, Ethan Allen.
To the Honble Provincial Congress, New York.1
Thus for the third time in five years Ethan Allen's relations with the government of New York were on an amicable footing.
14 Doc. Hist., 554.
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Such had been the relations up to and during the trial of the ejectment cases at Albany. Again for a brief period in 1772, when Governor Tryon offered a conciliatory hand, Ethan Allen at Bennington proposed a toast to him and to New York's Council;1 and, finally, in the year 1775 when Allen thought he saw an opportunity to gain military distinction in the Revolution.
The fifth Cumberland County convention probably decided on another measure of which no original record has come to light. This is to be inferred from the record of a meeting of the freeholders and inhabitants of the town of Windsor convened "according to the Resolves of the Congress of the County of Cumberland" on June 15, 1775. The endorsement on the sheet containing this record is "A Meeting to Chuse a Committee of Safety & how Highway work shall be done. June ye 15th A.D. 1775" and explains what might from the record itself be deemed obscure. According to the record, after the choice of Captain Benjamin Wait as moderator, the following were chosen-not, in terms, as a committee of safety but as a "Committee to Regulate & Decide Controvercies in the Town": Deacon Hezekiah Thomson Captain Benjamin Wait Thomas Cooper Ebenezer Curtis
Jeremiah Bishop
That there was conflict of opinion at this meeting is clear from what next followed:
"Voted and chose Ensn. Smeed 2
Mr. Ebenezer Hoisington Lieut. Watts Hubbard Mr. Asaph Butler and Mr. Solomon Emmons
a Committee to draw up instructions for the above mentioned Committee to act upon."
14 Doc. Hist. 482; H. Hall's Early History of Vt., 141.
2 Probably William Smead, senior.
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Nothing could have been better calculated to create confu- sion and render futile the work of the original committee of five than the appointment of a second committee of equal size to instruct the first. We may assume from Benjamin Wait's having been chosen moderator and a member of the first com- mittee that he had impressed upon his townsmen the views expressed by him in the letter which he, William Williams, and Joab Hoisington, had sent to President Livingston of the Pro- vincial Congress six days earlier. His four colleagues on the committee probably shared his views and were ready to join hands with New York in war against Britain. The views of the members of the second committee we can only guess. Perhaps they themselves were not unanimous, for we presently find Ebenezer Hoisington outspoken against New York, while Watts Hubbard, junior, was soon under charges of disloyalty either to the "new state" or to the American cause. The writer can find no clue as to what were the positions of Smead, Asaph Butler, or Solomon Emmons at that stirring moment. Happily, after an adjournment to the afternoon of the same day, the meeting voted to leave the "business of the town" with the first committee "without the instruction of the other committee chosen for that purpose they being all agreed." Whether the two committees agreed or whether the first com- mittee was unanimous as to its proper course and wished no instructions, it is impossible to determine. It is clear that among some of the townsmen there had been disagreement or doubt.
The meeting concluded its work by assessing a tax or "rate" for highway work to be assessed by the committee, but "in the same manner as the county tax," thus indicating an un- derstanding that, though provincial authority had ended, the wheels of government ought to be kept moving by a pro- visional local organization, but along familiar lines.
One misses at this period of Windsor's history the names of Israel Curtis and Joseph Wait. It is a singular circumstance that these two important figures, as well as Joab Hoisington -the three Windsor settlers who as commissioned officers gave their lives in the Revolutionary cause had taken resi- dence elsewhere. Curtis, by his local fame as a builder of
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mills and an organizer of new settlements, had attracted the attention of President Eleazar Wheelock. Wheelock, wanting such a man as Israel Curtis to subdue the wilderness in which Dartmouth College had been planted, had engaged him. In Hanover, Curtis was making his headquarters, if not his actual residence. He may have entertained towards Windsor the animus revertendi, for he (or rather his wife Elizabeth) retained title to a substantial portion of their Windsor lands; but he became prominent in the affairs of Hanover and Dresden and the Province of New Hampshire, was prompt to organize there a company of soldiers for service in the war, and was com- missioned a captain by that Province. His son, Zebina, who later became Windsor's leading citizen and one of the strong Vermont characters, was a member of the Dartmouth Col- lege company. A couple of Israel Curtis's letters, written while on duty in Canada, have been preserved. They indicate him a typical, rugged Christian of New England, ready to do his duty at any cost. The following extracts from his letter written to President Wheelock from St. John's on November 3, 1775, are worth while: "I expect to be on my way home in two weeks; but however God will order that, I hope to sub- mit that matter. . . . Desire your prayers for me and my company, for God's blessing on all our ways, that the har- mony that has already subsisted in my company may still continue." He had the good will of General Montgomery and General Wooster, who treated him with courtesy and consid- eration. He served in the army until his death, which oc- curred at the Nuns' Hospital at Montreal, April 10, 1776. Shortly before this the Continental Congress had commis- sioned him as major of the Continental line.
Joseph Wait, as has previously been stated, had been granted by Governor John Wentworth and the Provincial Council of New Hampshire, five hundred acres of land in the southwest corner of Claremont. Thither he had removed. In 1775 he received a commission as lieutenant-colonel in the first New Hampshire regiment (Bedell's). His command was ordered to Canada. He was wounded by a splinter from a bursting cannon and invalided home in 1776. On his return he died of his wound on September 13, and was buried by the
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roadside in the town of Clarendon on the west side of the Green Mountains.1 His wife and children subsequently re- turned to Windsor, where his daughter Martha became the wife of Zebina Curtis.
Of Joab Hoisington's desertion of Windsor for Woodstock under the cloud of Aaron Bartlett's death we have already written. We shall mention later Joab Hoisington's efforts as a soldier.
William Dean, junior, and Jacob Getchell had moved down to Weathersfield. David Stone died in Windsor, December 29, 1775. Samuel and Joel Stone had disappeared. Samuel Stone may have gone to Claremont, New Hampshire, with his brother-in-law, Joseph Wait. That Samuel Stone had not moved to a great distance is indicated by his enlistment as a soldier in Captain Benjamin Wait's company of Hoisington's Rangers at Windsor, August 6, 1776. The name "Sam1. Stone" appears as a sergeant in Lieutenant-Colonel John Peters's muster-rolls of the Queen's Loyal Rangers, but the reference may not be to Samuel Stone, of Windsor. Joel Stone was a Barnet grantee, but whether the same as the Joel of Windsor the writer knows not. Enoch Judd had moved to Claremont and Caleb Benjamin had died.
Allen and Warner, having been successful in their efforts to obtain from the Provincial Congress of New York an author- ization for the enlistment of the Green Mountain Boys, a meeting was held at Dorset on July 26, 1775, to make choice of officers. To Allen's great mortification, he was overwhelm- ingly defeated by Warner in the ballot for the lieutenant- colonelcy, nor was he chosen for any office whatever. Besides the nomination of Warner as lieutenant-colonel, this meeting nominated a major and elected seven captains and fourteen lieutenants-all from towns on the west side of the Green Mountains-and thus formed the beginning of that noted body of soldiers known as Warner's Green Mountain Boys.2 With commissions from New York, the battalion joined the
1 Joseph Wait's character, according to Colonel Frye Bayley who hated him, was brutal. See "Col. Frye Bayley's Reminiscenses" in Proceedings of Vt. Hist. Soc. for 1923-1925, pp. 33, 45, 55.
2 1 Gov. & Coun. 6.
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northern army under that brave son of Ireland, General Rich- ard Montgomery, in the month of September for an invasion of Canada. One of the captains in Warner's battalion, Cap- tain John Grant, came as far east as Windsor in search of re- cruits. He was here in the last days of July and secured the enlistment of Steel Smith's second son, Asahel, John Heath, Zenas Lull, Joshua Slayton, and William Hunter.1 Steel Smith's eldest son, Roswell, joined them in September.
Rejected by the Green Mountain Boys, Ethan Allen had secured General Philip Schuyler's permission in the month of August to proceed northward for information as to the possi- bility of recruiting Canadians.2 He obtained this employment upon giving his promise to comport himself properly. Though he held no commission, he was spoken of loosely as "Colonel" Allen. Montgomery made similar use of him. In this capacity Allen exerted himself with zeal and no little success. Soon he had gathered about him a band of two hundred and fifty, with prospects of as many more. Enthusiastically he wrote of his achievement to Montgomery on September 20.3 Good for- tune, however, seems to have turned his head, and in a wild burst of ardor on September 25, without orders from General Montgomery or anybody else, he attempted the capture of Montreal. He paid for this rashness by the loss of most of his men through casualties and desertions and by being himself taken a prisoner. Thus was removed from participation in the history of the New Hampshire Grants and Vermont, for a period of two years, eight months, and six days, their most stirring and puissant personality.
Mr. Crockett, out of loyalty to Vermont's famous chieftain, makes a late attempt to justify Ethan Allen's assault on Mon- treal,4 but the judgment of history is against him. Washing- ton's words on Allen have the tone of finality : "Colonel Allen's misfortune will, I hope, teach a lesson of prudence and sub- ordination to others who may be too ambitious to outshine their general officers, and, regardless of order and duty, rush into enterprises which have unfavorable effects on the public
1 Roswell Smith, Genealogy, 2d ed., p. 47; Windsor Centennial Memorial, p. 40.
2 H. Hall's Early Vt. Hist., 214. 3 H. Hall's Early Vt. Hist., 215.
« Crockett's Hist. Vt., vol. I, pp. 507-509.
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and are destructive to themselves." Though quite deficient in military training, Allen was described by Arnold as "a proper person to lead his own wild men." General Washington once spoke of him as brave. Yet when choosing between Allen and Warner as a military commander, the Green Mountain Boys unhesitatingly preferred the latter. Allen had plenty of physi- cal courage, had unbounded confidence in his own abilities and resourcefulness, and was but little hampered by scruple. He had, moreover, real zest for the exciting part of a soldier's work in time of war, and he thus set an example to the set- tlers upon the New Hampshire Grants in the early days of the American Revolution. A good proportion of his popu- larity depended on his humor, his success in maintaining a show of candor and fairness, and especially on his gift of loud and florid language, both written and oral, such as would do credit to a rustic journalist of the twentieth century. In an age when, in most parts of New England, the straight-laced Congregational Church and the State were nearly one and the same institution, Allen's boorish contempt for established re- ligion made general esteem for him impossible. President Ezra Stiles, of Yale, in recording in his diary the death of Ethan Allen, thus passes judgment: "Died in Vermont the profane and impious Deist, Gen. Ethan Allen, Author of the Oracles of Reason, a Book replete with scurrilous Reflexions on Revelation. 'And in Hell he lift up his Eyes being in Tor- ments.'"' 1
In the fourth volume of the Documentary History of New York, at pages 554 and 555, is the record of what is repre- sented to be the declaration of a convention of settlers on the New Hampshire Grants at Dorset on September 25, 1775. The editor of the Documentary History was mistaken as to the year, which should have been 1776. Curiously enough, Mr. E. P. Walton, in editing Governor and Council was misled, after deliberation, into accepting this record as of the year 1775.2 Mr. Crockett pointed out reasons why the record could not have been made in 1775.3 Conclusive proof of the error lies in the fact that it represents Seth Warner and several of
1 2 Diary of Ezra Stiles, p. 161.
2 8 Gov. & Coun., 382-385.
3 Crockett's Hist. Vt., vol. II, pp. 189-190.
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his officers as present at Dorset on September 25, 1775, when, as a matter of fact, they were then off on the Canadian cam- paign.
In raising troops on the east side of the Green Mountains, the Congress of New York proceeded with more leisure. From the town of Townshend seven men had left for Roxbury in Massachusetts to join the Continental troops under General Washington.1 Perhaps there were volunteers from other towns. The Cumberland County Congress or Committee of Safety, which held its sixth meeting at Westminster on July 26, left no record other than that it confided to William Wil- liams the sole authority to represent the county at New York.2 There was, however, a county nomination of military officers whose names are set forth by B. H. Hall in his History of Eastern Vermont at pages 770 to 771, but there is no evidence that any of these officers ever had an actual command. Fi- nally, in August, the Provincial Congress ordered that the counties of Cumberland, Gloucester, and Charlotte be em- braced in one brigade, and pursuant to such order the Cum- berland County Congress and Committee of Safety met for the seventh session at Westminster on November 21. Since the notifications or warnings for this meeting may have been preserved nowhere outside of the Windsor town records, and since they are not without interest, they are set forth in their entirety :
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