GenMassachusetts-L Archives

From: <>
Subject: New York~New England and Ethan Allen
Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 23:12:08 EDT

Excerpt below - entire coverage at this website:

http://members.aol.com/Pochalidze/ethan.html

In the early 1760s both New Hampshire and New York had claimed
jurisdiction over the land between the Connecticut and Hudson rivers.
After an appeal to London met with a decision favorable to New York in
1764, that colony tried to force settlers with New Hampshire titles to
pay for their land a second time. The New Hampshire claimants sought
legal aid, but, when a New York judge ruled against them, they met at
Stephen Fay's Catamount Tavern in Bennington and formed the Green
Mountain Boys to keep Yorker surveyors, sheriffs, and settlers off their
land. Ethan Allen, the leader of these Vermont vigilantes, confidently
announced, "The Gods of the hills are not the Gods of the valleys."
Holders of New Hampshire titles viewed Allen and his followers as the
local version of Robin Hood and his merry men. New York authorities
vilified them as "the Bennington Mob." Frederick Haldimand, the
Governor-General of Canada with whom Allen later negotiated for the
future of Vermont, described the Green Mountain Boys as a "collection of
the most abandoned wretches that ever lived."

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