Ethan Allen – Founding Father of the Vermont Real Estate Market
I just read this article published in Slate magazine about our state’s founding father, Ethan Allen. It is actually a review of Willard Sterne Randall’s biography entitled Ethan Allen: His Life and Times.
The article recounts Allen’s rise from a self taught land speculator to the founding father of Vermont. Similar to many of us non-native Vermonters, Ethan was drawn North from Massachusetts by the open expanses and seemingly endless possibilities of the rugged land.
Ethan was opportunistic. Before the revolution, claims to the same Vermont land were held by both deed holders in New Hampshire and New York. In 1764 by edict of King George III, New Hampshire titles were declared void and Vermont became part of New York. Allen began to ferociously acquire titles to land from the disenfranchised New Hampshire land investors who thought that their holdings were worthless.
Ethan and his family started the Green Mountain Boys and began to terrorize the New Yorkers that began to claim to the land. In 1775, plans were set to arrest Allen for treason. While avoiding capture, the insurrection of the colonists was beginning in Boston and Allen seized the moment and lead an attack on Fort Ticonderoga with only 83 men. He took the fort without firing a shot. It was the Patriot’s first victory over the British and provided them with a huge store of munitions.
Ethan Allen was declared a war hero, later became a prisoner of war and then finally returned to Vermont after it was declared a state independent of New York to cash in on his big gamble…Hundreds of thousands of Vermont acres along the Champlain Valley.
Ethan Allen greedily grabbed large expanses of land away from early settlers and New York land barrens. I can only speculate that through those actions he established the sustained values of future Vermonters regarding land and individual liberty. He was also the first major player in Vermont real estate.
