In the 1760’s the Burling family purchased land from New Hampshire governor Benning Wentworth. The Burling’s were land speculators and had hoped to make money by re-selling the land to others who were interested in settling in the recently established New Hampshire Grants.
Unfortunately for the Burling’s, the King of England ruled that New Hampshire did not have the right to sell any land west of the Connecticut River, so the Burling’s were worried that their large land investments were illegal and worthless. The Burling’s sent representatives to England in hopes of convincing the King that he should reconsider and recognize the New Hampshire Grant land titles.
However, the King did not agree with the Burling’s. This meant it was unclear as to who really owned the land east of Lake Champlain and west of the Connecticut River. Was the land New York’s or New Hampshire’s to sell?
The Burling’s were worried that they would lose the thousands of acres they had purchased from New Hampshire. Luckily for the Burling’s, in 1772 the Allen family, led by Ethan and Ira Allen, offered to purchase about 40,000 acres of land from the Burling’s and the Burling’s agreed to sell. The Allen’s had purchased Burling’s land when it was not clear that they had the legal right to sell it. In 1772 Ethan and Ira Allen were leading the Vermont independence movement and they also became sketchy land speculators in the northwestern part of the Grants.
As the years went on and it still wasn’t clear whether New York or New Hampshire governments were in control of the Grants, the Allen’s promoted the idea of the Grants becoming an independent Republic. This way the land claimed by the Allen’s would be legally recognized and it would be possible for them to make a profit from their land deal with the Burling’s.
In support of the Allen’s desire for independence, in 1777, representatives of many of the New Hampshire Grant towns voted to create the independent state of Vermont. Brattleboro did not send a representative to this meeting. In fact, at the next Brattleboro Town Meeting, 165 out of 166 attendees voted NOT to recognize the newly formed State of Vermont. It seemed Vermont’s southeast corner did not want to join the newly formed republic. Instead, many of the residents felt a strong loyalty to New York.
Conflict between the newly formed Vermont government and Brattleboro continued. In 1779 Ethan Allen arrived in the Brattleboro area with hundreds of Vermont militia and arrested, intimidated and exiled residents opposed to the Vermont government.
Again, in 1782, both Ethan and Ira Allen led the militia back to the Brattleboro area to combat those who opposed the Vermont government. The Allen’s banished opponents of Vermont and forced them to move across the Connecticut River to New Hampshire. The Allen’s threatened to chop their heads off if they returned. The brothers then led the Vermont militia while they destroyed many local houses and farms, confiscated property of those not loyal to Vermont and threatened to burn the whole region to the ground if the residents did not peacefully submit to the authority of Vermont.
In the courts and with the militia, the Allen’s intimidated Vermont’s southeastern residents for over a decade before Brattleboro and Guilford finally chose to join the republic in 1784. By that time many of the Vermont opponents had been bullied into leaving or had given in to the persecution of the Vermont court system.
People are complicated. The Allen’s are celebrated as Vermont independence heroes but they were also very intimidating to those who opposed them. One person’s hero can be another person’s bully.