Imagine being such a legend that someone from New York—a state you famously hated—decides to name a line of furniture after you in the 150 years after you died. Then they decide to change the name of the whole store chain to match because your name is just that good.
It may be the benchmark of a life well-lived, but the lore of Ethan Allen merits far more than being the namesake of an end table.
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Allen was the first person to give Benedict Arnold the proverbial (and probably actual) middle finger, a move would set the tone for the platoon sergeant-platoon leader dynamic for the future U.S. Army. He was also the leader of the Revolutionary War’s Green Mountain Boys, and the OG New York hater.
Vermont’s Founding Father was many things, but Ethan Allen was, above all, a patriot who put his life on the line for liberty and American independence. He led a struggle for working class farmers against wealthy landowners in New York and, in doing so, formed a unit that would be crucial to American independence. Vermont decided his life warranted a massive monument, but had no idea where to put it.
Because no one could find Ethan Allen’s body.
The Original New York Hater
Land ownership in the latter half of the 1700s was pretty complex, considering how many people wanted land on the continent and how much land was actually available. The original territory of modern-day Vermont was then governed by New Hampshire, and land Governor Benning Wentworth was handing land grants out to anyone who would pay.
Wentworth, it would turn out, was far from magnanimous about his land grants. He was hardly even fair.
He’d staffed the provincial council and courts with his own relatives and cronies. That’s how he was able to authorize 129 townships in territory which was also claimed by New York. He charged steep fees, granted choice plots to family members, and reserved choice pieces of land in every single town for himself, eventually making himself the richest man in the colony.
And those land grants were pretty much worthless.
New York didn’t just accept Wentworth’s grants. It disputed New Hampshire’s claims; first with the Royal Board of Trade and then King George III. In 1764, the King settled the issue, resolving the land claims in New York’s favor. New York began ordering settlers to surrender their charters, and in order to keep their homes, New York forced farmers to buy their land a second time—at an inflated price most couldn’t afford.
Eventually, New York authorities started physically threatening to drive out the landowners who couldn’t pay up. Angry locals met at Bennington’s Catamount Tavern in 1770 and formed what were essentially militias to protect the New Hampshire grantees from the “Yorkers,” surveyors and settlers from New York. By 1772, they would be known as the Green Mountain Boys.
Their elected leader, their Colonel Commandant, was Ethan Allen.
Allen and the Green Mountain Boys were ruthless in preventing New York from enforcing its laws west of the Green Mountains. They whipped surveyors, burned cabins, and even tied one Yorker supporter to an armchair a made him swing from the Catamount Tavern’s sign for a few hours. New York eventually offered a reward for the capture of the Green Mountain Boys. Allen responded by issuing bounties for New York government officials.
The conflict turned to bloodshed in 1775 when hundreds of evicted farmers and their supporters occupied the courthouse in Westminster to protest the arrival of judges and settlers from New York. When they refused to leave, which prompted a sheriff’s posse to storm the courthouse, inciting a riot. the sheriff’s men fired into a crowd armed mostly with clubs. Two men died. Allen and the Green Mountain Boys rode into town the next day.
American Revolution
What became known as the Westminster Massacre led to the rise of militias opposed to British rule in the area, which was just in time because a few weeks later, the American Revolution kicked off. British troops squared off against patriot minutemen in Lexington and Concord.
It wasn’t long before a Connecticut militia sent Allen their plan to capture Fort Ticonderoga (in New York, no less) and asked him to assist. Allen and 130 of his Green Mountain set out with 60 militiamen from Connecticut and Massachusetts in May 1775. But as they marched, Col. Benedict Arnold arrived with a commission from the Massachusetts Committee of Safety and tried to assume command.
Having followed Allen in scaring off New Yorkers for years, the Green Mountain Boys refused to acknowledge Benedict Arnold as commander. Allen, wanting to just accomplish the mission, agreed to let Arnold be at the front of the assault alongside him. Only 83 men made it across Lake Champlain befoe first light, however, and insstead of waiting for everyone and losing the cover of darkness, the Green Mountain Boys attacked anyway.
The raid was successful. In complete silence, the joint force overwhelmed the lone sentry on duty and forced the surrender of the fort without firing a shot.
Capturing Ticonderoga meant securing much-needed arms for the war effort, and its guns gave George Washington the firepower he needed to break the Siege of Boston. Shortly after, Allen began to advocate for an invasion of Quebec and went before the Continental Congress to have the Green Mountain Boys incorporated into the Continental Army.
His wish would be granted by New York’s provincial government, despite their having put a price on his head. But when the Green Mountain Regiment was raised, Allen was not elected to lead it. The slight didn’t matter to Allen; he was still devoted to the American cause and joined the regiment as a volunteer.
Invasion of Quebec
In September 1775, Gen. Philip Schuyler led Americans into Canada. Recognizing Allen’s regional influence, Schuyler dispatched him to secure local support along the landscape spanning Fort Saint-Jean and Montreal. He was also sent into the countryside specifically to recruit French-speaking Canadien militia.
Allen successfully recruited roughly 200 local men. While operating near Longueuil, he linked up with Maj. John Brown, a fellow veteran of Ticonderoga. Knowing Montreal was lightly defended, the two developed a plan to attack the city without Schuyler’s go-ahead.
Their plan relied entirely on speed and synchronization between the two forces. Allen was to take his force across the Saint Lawrence River from Longueuil to Longue-Pointe, while Brown’s force was supposed to cross further upstream to encircle the town from the west. On the night of Sept. 24, 1775, Allen took roughly 110 men—composed of about 80 Canadiens and 30 Americans—and rowed across the dark river.
Upon reaching the northern shore, Allen looked back only to realize that Brown failed to cross, leaving Allen isolated on the island.
Realizing the mistake too late, Allen didn’t have enough boats and his retreat was cut off. British Governor General Guy Carleton caught wind of the attack and dispatched a force of around 300 men, consisting of British regulars, local loyalists, and indigenous warriors. In the ensuing Battle of Longue-Pointe, Allen’s heavily outnumbered men fought briefly before being overwhelmed and surrounded.
Allen and around 30 of his men were captured by the British. When Allen was brought before British Gen. Richard Prescott, Prescott asked if he was the same Ethan Allen who was at Ticonderoga. When Allen said he was, Prescott raged at him, and threatened to beat the prisoner with his cane. Allen, unperturbed shook his fist and dared him to do it.
When the British threatened to bayonet Allen’s Canadiens, Allen later wrote that he stood between the condemned prisoners and the redcoats, and bared his chest, telling them he was the sole cause of their rebellion, and that the British should kill him instead. They didn’t; but Prescott promised Allen he would hang in London.
Allen’s superior officers were furious over the unauthorized attack, and condemned his actions to the Continental Army. Allen was treated as a traitor, chained, and shipped off to England, spending 32 months imprisoned, mostly on British prison ships before finally being exchanged in 1778. He was the highest profile POW of the war, which saved his life. The British were afraid to make a martyr of Allen by hanging him.
Ethan Allen’s Body
Following his release from imprisonment, Allen eventually returned home to Vermont, where he continued to advocate for the New Hampshire Grants, this time pushing British Loyalists out of the area. Much of his life was dedicated to fighting for Vermont, including seeking Vermont’s recognition as an independent state.
Ethan Allen died of a stroke in 1789 and was buried in Green Mount Cemetery in Burlington, which is presumably the last time anyone was sure where his body was.
Some 70 years after he died, the Vermont Legislature funded a grand, 42-foot granite monument to mark the final resting place of the legendary leader of the Green Mountain Boys. But when the monument committee surveyed the burial grounds, they found they had a problem: the hero of Ticonderoga was missing.
Decades earlier, a simple marble slab marked his grave, declaring to visitors that “the corporeal part of General Ethan Allen rests beneath this stone.” But by the early 1850s, that stone vanished, likely stolen during a period of neglect. When workers searched the area, they found no casket, no skeletal remains, and no evidence of grave robbing or any official reburial. No one knew where his body was.
They built the monument anyway, but instead of claiming to stand directly over his body, the new inscription noted that Allen was simply “buried near the site.”
As for Vermont, it didn’t just break away from England, it broke away from everyone. On Jan. 15, 1777, delegates from the New Hampshire Grants towns met and declared independence from everyone who ever staked a claim on their lands: Quebec, New York, New Hampshire, everybody. That July, they adopted the Vermont Constitution and spent the next 14 years running as an independent republic (even if no one recognized it), before finally joining the Union in 1791.
Ethan Allen’s legacy is still honored throughout Vermont (even if no one knows where his body is), and the Green Mountain Boys exist today as the Vermont National Guard.
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