 I'm going to start us off by welcoming everyone to the program. So my name is Angie Grove. I'm the executive director at the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum. And the Homestead Museum hosts a monthly lecture series. And of course, prior to Zoom or prior to COVID, all of our lecture series were in person here in Burlington, Vermont at the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum. And then during COVID time, we switched to fully remote on Zoom. And we have this year gone back to fully in person with a few exceptions. And today's program is one of those exceptions, because we found that when we went fully remote during COVID, it actually opened up the doors for us to host speakers from further away, particularly from international locations, such as from Gotland, which is where your speaker is going to be coming from today. So we are in the winter months while the museum general admission is closed. We are having some of our programs be fully remote. And hopefully, that will also allow some of our audience members to be from a larger and more vast area as well. Now, just so everyone is aware of this program is being recorded, this recording will be edited by one of our partners in this program, CCTV, is a local nonprofit for media literacy and the democratization of media. And they will be editing this video and submitting it for our local public television, as well as allowing us to then post it on the YouTube page for the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum. So if you have to get out of this program early and you don't catch all of it, or if you have a friend who didn't get a chance to see it, or if you love it so much, you wanna watch it a second time, you can always go back to our YouTube page to watch it from there as well. Okay, so I have a couple of announcements just for the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum. And then we are going to, I'm gonna step away so that one of my colleagues can introduce the speaker and then we're gonna go from there. So the few announcements I have, I wanna first let everyone know about the last program we have for the calendar year coming up. And this is a members-only event. So if you are currently not a member of the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum, but you can fix that very easily by going into our website to purchase membership online. I do, if you're considering it, I do highly recommend you do it today or very soon so that you can catch the members-only event coming up, but also because the prices for membership are gonna go up in 2024. So lock in your rate now. So coming up, we have on Sunday, December 3rd, we have the member-only lecture, which is actually gonna be me who's the speaker and my presentation is titled Ethan Allen Infernal Villain. And you'll have to come to the event to find out more about that. And I will put into the chat box in a moment a link to our website if you weren't thinking about purchasing membership. So that's our final event coming up for this calendar year. And then in January, we will be publishing our event list for 2024, including our speakers for the lecture series, our book club meeting dates and what books we're gonna be reading in 2024, as well as other special events like reenactment events in the summer and the spring as well. Okay, I also want to really quickly give a shout out to the sponsors of our community enrichment programs at the Homestead Museum. So we have the support and sponsorship of some local companies, including M&T Bank, North Country Federal Credit Union and AARP Vermont. Without their sponsorship, we would not be able to bring these programs to you, in particularly our monthly lecture series. We wouldn't be able to bring it to you for free without their community investment in our programs and in our mission. But thank you to our sponsors as well. Okay, logistically, I'm gonna ask that everyone stay muted except for our speaker. You can have your camera on, you can have your camera off at your discretion and your comfort level, but do be aware that it is being recorded. So if you have your camera on, your visuals will be recorded in the recording as well. And so we get to the very end for Q&A and when we open up the floor for Q&A, then as we call on people, you can unmute and also turn on your camera if you're comfortable with that. While our speaker is presenting, if you have a burning question that you don't want to forget and you wanna put it into the chat box, you can send it directly to either myself, my profile is Angie Grove, comma Ethan Allen Homestead or my colleague, John, who's in the profile that's just called Ethan Allen Homestead Museum. So you can send questions to either one or you can save your question and then you can raise your hand or indicate that you'd like to ask questions again and we can call on you and you can ask the question in person. Okay, so I think I've gone over everything I need to go over and now I'm gonna step away so that my colleague Zachary Bennett can introduce our speaker today. Just, yep, I see that Zach is here. So I'm going to mute myself and let Zach take over. Okay, it's me. All right. Hello everyone, I'm Zachary Bennett. I'm a professor of history at Norwich University. I study and write about early American history and I'm very excited to be attending this talk with you by Benjamin Anderson, the fluidity of allegiance to the Revolutionary Vermont and what I'm gonna do is just kind of provide a little bit of an introduction of where Mr. Anderson's work kind of is situated within the larger work that historians are doing about the American Revolution right now because we're hearing about some pretty cutting edge research, which is always awesome. So Benjamin Anderson will be talking about shifting political allegiances in Vermont once part of New York, arguably part of New Hampshire, once part of the Wabanaki Dawn land, part of the United States, then its own independent republic for a while and almost part of Canada. So political allegiance, understandably, was very complicated in this part of the world in the late 18th century. And Anderson will help us understand the motivations behind those shifting allegiances. Benjamin Anderson's research is part of a larger historiographical turn broadly known as the transnational turn or the global turn. This school of historians look at the American Revolution from a more global perspective and have turned our attention away from familiar folks like the founding fathers to people who lived on the borders of the American Revolution or beyond. So Native Americans, loyalists, these type of people, these scholars have taken seriously the experiences of the losers of the American Revolution such as African Americans, loyalists and Native Americans and have felt that including their perspectives other than a nice thing to do is essential for understanding what the American Revolution was all about. And one of the ways you can see this is in the last two decades, some of the most important books that have come out on the American Revolution have titles like this, Independence Lost, Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution, American Revolutions, A Continental History. The first book, Independence Lost is by Kathleen Duvall. If you're interested, it's very good. American Revolutions is by Alan Taylor which I think is the best synthesis of the revolution currently out. And then finally, another book to give you a sense of how historians are approaching this period is by Maya Jasinoff, Liberty's Exiles, American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World, right? So it's kind of focusing on the losers, the people who weren't as successful and also understanding how the American Revolution was actually part of a global, it was really a global conflict rather than one that just happened within the borders of the good old US of A. So Vermont was certainly on the edge of the American Revolution and has not been really explored really in depth since really the 80s or 90s. So Anderson's work is much anticipated and it's filling a gap in the research. And I'm hoping that, and I hope when you listen to this presentation as well, that Anderson's research doesn't just help us understand about what happened in Vermont but in a wider sense how Vermont and the experiences that happened here which were very weird and exceptional in some ways help us understand what the American Revolution meant not just for the United States, not just for North America but what the American Revolution's impact had on the wider world, okay? So a little bit of a biographical background on our speaker, Benjamin Anderson was born and bred in Fife, Scotland. Benjamin earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Sterling and his postgraduate degree at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He is now studying for his PhD at the University of Edinburgh on Vermont and Revolutionary America. I mean, I think it's always awesome, right? When we have people who look at our revolution from different parts of the world, right? It's a different kind of lens on it. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking with his dog at Scotland, hence for his love for Vermont and its mountains. He is a supporter of the East Fife Football Club who I noticed beat Clyde 4-0 today so congratulations on that, Ben. Little just kind of personal thing. I met Ben on Twitter actually because historians are, it's kind of, as historians, it's kind of great for us to be on Twitter because we can be around people who are as interested in the kind of niche things that we are. And I kind of found this Benjamin Anderson person, this young graduate student who was obsessed with Vermont in the American Revolution in Scotland. And I thought, wow, that's pretty interesting and neat. And when he was in Vermont, I was able to meet him in Burlington. And when I was doing research in London two years ago, I was able to meet up with him. So it's been nice to find a scholar of the American Revolution who's interested in this part of the world and interested in Vermont and have a kind of transnational scholarly relationship like that. Anyways, I'm going to hand it over to Mr. Anderson and I look forward, as I hope the rest of you do, to his talk. Thank you, Zach. Can just make sure everyone can hear me all right. Is that good, yeah? That's a fantastic mustache you have there as well. Absolutely loving it. Fantastic. But yeah, thank you for the introduction, Zach. And thank you for everyone for coming along today to listen to me waffle one about my research on Vermont in Revolutionary America. And thank you also to the Ethan Allen Homestead and Angie for organising this event. So yeah, I look forward to any questions and observations you may have at the end. Of course, it's a PhD project and PhD projects are always a work in progress. And I'm always open to feedback or whatever you have for me. I'd like to fit into my project challenges, the Vermont historiography, which kind of looks at Vermont as a passionate patriot support. I don't disagree with this version of Vermont supported to patriots more than loyalists, but I do believe that the feeling only extended so far. And it's a more of this idea of localism that we see across America, but especially on the outskirts as Zach was saying, where we end up seeing on the edge people kind of go in their own way, as we'll see as we go through this with our states. So yeah, and it's the more to see the limits of national identity and nationalism during the Revolutionary era. And just a point to note is that Vermont, to begin with, will be referred to as the New Hampshire Grants because that is the name it was prior to its declaration of independence in 1777. So I'd like to start this presentation. I'd like to start this presentation by considering the word that is currently on your screen. Country, I believe perfectly captures the mentality of people in the early modern period. Although the word possesses a relative flexibility about today's usage, it's typically used to reflect a nation, but back in the early modern period, it was used more to describe a region, a state, colony or county, as the definition suggests. And it kind of takes on a meaning of nation as we can progress through the early modern period, but at begin with, it was really to do with the region as it says. And so in this period, localism and local identity rather than national identity and nationalism, where the potent focuses, potent forces, the word was widely used in the context by numerous leading figures from Vermont, such as Ethan Allen and Thomas Chittenden, who was the first governor of Vermont. But you could also see it being used across the continent by the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, where they refer to Virginia and their region as their country. And you can see a couple of examples on your screen there of where it's being used by New Hampshire Grant settlers in 1767 for this petition here, and also by Ira Allen, the younger brother of Ethan Allen and one of his pamphlets here. So what is localism? Unfortunately for me, localism is a problematic concept because of its flexibility. Localism can be confined to a scale as small as your street to as large as your region. I've tried to identify three strands of localism to try and help me make sense of the complex nature of revolutionary Vermont and the northern frontier as Zach outlined at the start. So firstly, we have the micro-localism which represents the towns and small communities that have dispersed across the northern frontier during the 18th century. We then have the meso-localism, which is the colony, which then becomes the state. And then we have macro-localism of the region in this case, New England. And then they kind of like strands in a rope, the three localism that are intertwined and they strengthen the localist mentality as a whole. Of course, as I've said, localism, it wasn't confined to Vermont. It was evident across North America. And by understanding this mentality, it can help us to explain the emergence of other separatist states like those shown on the slide of Franklin, which is more than the Tennessee's and Transylvania, which is more than the Kentucky and all the begging into the Tennessee's there. So kinship, family and friends, political and cultural identities, economics and history, these all helped contribute towards a sense of localism. Micro-localism contained immediate community who were connected by their shared experience of chain migration and settling and defending their land titles from encroaching Yorkers, or in the case of the Yorkers and the New Hampshire grants, they defended themselves from the quote, the Bennington mob of Ethan Allen and his associates. The Mezzo and the macro-localisms however, were more imagined communities, people that lived beyond the immediate vicinity of the smaller communities and they were linked by a heritage, culture, religion and political beliefs. For the colonists, allegiance, it seems in this era operated on two levels. When the most important immediate level was their allegiance to their state or colony that provided them with their political voice and safeguarded their properties and liberties and it was also where they came into daily contact with. To protect one's state was an act of mezzo-localism that in New England had fundamental consequences for the micro-localism because the two were so intertwined, especially in Vermont. Simultaneously, they also paid allegiance to a higher authority, first the British Empire and then the United States of America and this made them part of a wider network of defense against foreign enemies as well as allowed them to have trade and partners across the world and across the North American continent. Allegiance to the latter seems to be, only went so far it was able to protect their local needs and when they started to encroach on their liberties and properties, then they started to look elsewhere for protection, whether that be to the United States, back to the British Empire or in the case of Vermont, even to themselves. Localism therefore transcended nationalism in the revolutionary era. People were much more concerned about the issues in their local communities, their states of colony or region than they were about the ongoing battle between the US and the British Empire. If one looks at the town records in Vermont, for example, then one can see very little reference to the revolutionary war during that period. You'll get the odd mention talking about, for example, Ebenezer Allen, Ethan Allen's cousin going away to another town to pick up ammunition, but there's not much more than that. Concerns on a local level were numerous and motivation for how one acted could change with new developments politically and militarily. So we have this year, we have Vermonters who are looking to create their own state and then they're securing it, which in turn allowed them to secure their own land. We have conservative New Yorkers in Vermont looking to preserve New York constitution, while some New Hampshire rights were looking for a political voice namely over the east of the Connecticut River. Others were looking for protection from a conservative New York constitution that seemed to be at odds with this New England way. We then have New Yorkers west of Lake Champlain feeling neglected by the New York government and left at the mercy of the ravages of war. So they're looking for defense. New Yorkers in Vermont eventually grown disillusioned with New York and the continental Congresses inability to protect them from the Vermont government. And it is even possible to extend the analysis into the Northwest in Massachusetts, where Berkshire constitutionalist pushed back against the Massachusetts constitution and even led Ethan Allen to ponder annexing the county to a greater Vermont. This multitude of motivations comes the validity of a legion that stressed the localist mentality of the local colonists and early U.S. citizens. So again, we'll rattle them off a wee list. We have New Hampshire rights becoming Vermonters, New Hampshire rights becoming New Yorkers, New Yorkers becoming New Hampshire rights, New Yorkers becoming Vermonters. In one instance, one small group of New Yorkers become Massachusetts and then revert back to New York. We have for Native Americans, Abbenakis, the little few number, they jumped on between the Patriots and the Loyalists. We see this amongst the white population as well as people, Patriots become Loyalists, Loyalists become Patriots. In the story of Thomas Johnson, which Angie covered in her dissertation, which is a very enjoyable read, we have a patriot that became a Loyalist and is supposedly very bad to have been a patriot. And in some cases, we see movement on both levels, on a state level and on this higher level, national level. And my personal favorite is Peter O'Call of Norwich, New Hampshire. So we have this New York sympathiser who then asked for New Hampshire to annex part of or all of Vermont, whilst he sat in the Vermont General Assembly. He also served at the Battles of Bennington and Saratoga as a patriot, but he was described in one piece of correspondence, quote, as a friend to government or Tories and a Loyalist. That guy in particular stressed me out because I was trying to figure out what was going on with him. So from there, boundaries and colonial North America were nebulous. And they were a key reason why we see so much fluid allegiance on the northern frontier in such a strong, micro-localist mentality. And the King George III Reign, hazy borders set colors against one another, encouraged macro-localist sentiment as cultures clashed by New Yorkers versus New Englanders, micro-localist feelings as small communities band together to beat back external colonial forays that claimed jurisdiction over their land and meso-localism as colonies competed with one another for the King's approval and establishing near jurisdiction and ownership over land that lay on disputed territories. And you could see by the quote on your screen here by Andrew Burnaby, he was a minister from England who traveled, traversed the North American continent in 1759 to 1760 and took in all the different colonies, looked at the different societies and generally the conclusion of all these different localities who were just completely at odds with one another. And as he says, even the limits and boundaries of each colony are a constant source of litigation. So as the story of the boundary dispute between New York, New Hampshire, and New Hampshire Grant settlers has been told so often, I'll just recite the salient facts. Without a doubt, Benning Wentworth, the Royal Governor of New Hampshire was perhaps as greedy and corrupt as he came. A indebted merchant took advantage of the nebulous borders that characterised colonial America to make a quick buck for himself. So he cited Sri Lanka's base in the Kennecke River from 1749 onwards. It was a bold move that directly challenged New York to exhort it in. New York claimed the land belonged to them because a 1664 patent from King Charles II to the Duke of York, his brother, extended to the western bank of the Kennecke River, which was at New York. Although New York and the Board of Trade warned Wentworth not to issue any more grants, he continued to do so until the Seven Years War outbreak in 1756. Wentworth benefited immensely from the speculative frenzy that overtook the colonists after the Seven Years War, with as many as 20,000 people moving into the New Hampshire grants by the start of the Revolutionary War. Cadwalader Coden, who would serve as the governor of New York on multiple occasions, was unhappy with Wentworth's conduct. He reported the matter to George III. He determined in 1764 that New York's boundary ran to the western bank of the Kennecke River. Far free clearing up the mess, George actually made it even worse. He failed to validate or avoid the settlers' land grants from New Hampshire. His use of the phrase to be the boundary was used by both sides of the debate. One hand, the workers argued this showed that the Board had always ran to the western bank of the Kennecke. On the other hand, the grant settlers claimed it showed the land previously belonged to New Hampshire, thus their land grant were valid. With the 1764 proclamation at New York site to issue their own land grant that subsequently overlapped with the land grants from New Hampshire, only adding further confusion to the situation. We also demanded the settler lay a second quit rent fee to secure their land, which infuriated the settler and led those especially on the website of the Green Mountains to petition George III for relief from encroaching Yorker officials who ran lines on their land. Samuel Robinson, who was sort of the leader, I would say, in the western New Hampshire grants prior to Ethan Allen, travelled to London in 1767 and he requested George III to validate their lands and annex them to whatever state. Robinson died walks in London, which eventually led the leadership by void on the grants and George III eventually demanded New York stop issuing land grants until he had made his final decision on the map. The struggle for this region, the northern frontier, where the borders were very easy indeed. Indeed, New York, some New York believed that their jurisdiction actually extended to just shortly St. Lawrence River in Canada. And the struggle for the region was symptomatic of the meso-localism within the colonies during the 18th century. And it serves as an excellent example of the divisions at King George III, whether by design or accident, created by Stoke and localism. Nobody, like I said, nobody was entirely sure about the border. New Hampshire grants and New Yorkers appealed to the King by arguing why the land was important for the King's own interests. Both sought to portray themselves as able to financially benefit the King through their hard work or their business savvy. The settlers, however, also appeared to the British strategy of depositing colonists on the border to protect the seaboard of Native American threats and foreign imperial enemies. They depict themselves as these gritty, skilled gunmen who would fight and die for their King. Further, they sought to portray the New Yorkers as less loyal than themselves, because they continued to issue land grants against the King's wishes. Made this gritting as pretty clear through the Green Mountain Boys in their campaign of terror against Yorkers on the New Hampshire grants. And of course, no story of Vermont can be told without Ian Allen, this man who I've likened to the William Wallace of Vermont. He's this mythical figure who certainly lived, but there's no enduring image of physical image. So you're left to use your imagination, which he enjoyed also doing. So he came from Lichfield, Connecticut and possessed a controversial reputation. He'd been kicked out of towns for his behavior and he criticised Christianity. As a teenager, he was forced to deal with the death of his father and to forego further education to look after his family and the farm. This never stopped him, however, from aspiring to become a philosophical gentleman and the grant settler struggle gave him an outlet to express himself. He peered in the grants in the 1760s and discovered a vast amount of untaped land that he could speculate. From a young age, his father had drove it into him that land speculation was a good way to accumulate wealth and if the accumulation of wealth could secure the family for future generations, it was a traditional New England way of thinking. If his brothers and cousin created the Onion River Land Company and accumulated 75,000 acres of Western land by 1775, protection of his investment and family became closely tied to the settler's mission to validate their lands. With so much land and little money, Allen could not afford to pay a second quit rent like many of the other settlers slash speculators that lived in the grants. Allen came to represent the New Hampshire grant settlers in the ejectment trials of 1770 and 1771, a series of trials in the New York Supreme Court between the Yorker landowners and the New Hampshire grant settlers. The court ruled in favour of the landowners and the settlers faced ejection from their land and the aftermath even founded the famous Green Mountain Boys who spent the next few years terrorising Yorker officials, farmers and settlers in the grants. Such an example of their tactic was that of Dr. Samuel Adams in Arlington. As pictured on this slide, he was tied to a chair and hanged on the sign of the Catamount Tavern because he was encouraging settlers to pay the second quit rent. As he terrorised the Yorkers, Allen used the press to attack Governor William Tryon and the Yorkers. The accused New Yorkers of attempting to enslave and impoverish settlers used the similar Lockean philosophy that we see across North America at the time by arguing the land belonged to the man who tilled it and he depicted the struggle as one of class, the peasants of the grants versus the great gentlemen landowners of New York. On a number of occasions throughout the 1770s, he would argue Vermont had reverted into a state of nature, thus the settlers owned the land. With time he would eventually become the spokesperson for the state or the state. It was a common role that we see evolving in other self-erected states in North America, such as Franklin and Kentucky, where one individual seems to place themselves at the head of the state in a lot of the population in respect to position. This person then becomes a focal point that offers direction in the population struggle against a league of gentlemen that they perceive to be in a state that they are tempted to separate from and the Continental Congress. Alan and the Green Mountain Boys' actions made the dividing lines more distinct between the different factions. Those in the West would be, I would call them, the separatists and they would be the Vermonters, those in the center of your screen. Over time and with men in Bennington, Alan created a clique called the Arlington Dune Tool. This group included Thomas Chittington, his youngest brother, Ira Allen, Mosie Robinson, Joseph Faye, John Fassett Jr., Timothy Brounson, and Samuel Safford. Chittington would serve as a governor of Vermont from 1777 to 1790. Only technicality would prevent him from sitting in 1791 and he would return from 1791 to his death in 1797. Ira Allen served on the governor and council. He was treasurer, a severe general. Robinson, Vermont Supreme Court judge and member of the governor and council who would take Chittington's place in 1791. Joseph Faye sat on the governor and council. He was Secretary of State, John Fassett Jr., again, governor and council and a member of the Vermont Supreme Court. There were other factions in the West who disagreed with the boys' methods, such as James Breakinridge and Jeho Holly, who preferred to use petitions to secure their land and they coincidentally tended to go to Loyalus, Jeho Holly would eventually join Burgoyne at Crown Point or to Conderoga and James Breakinridge would sort of kind of remain on his land and kind of known as a Loyalist. But because of his connections with Ethan Allen, he would generally not receive harassment. Others in the grant were more conservative, socially and religiously and he tarred the West side of the same brush by believing him to be like Allen, a dangerous anti-Christian riotous man. Naturally, as a chief target of the Green Mountain Boys, Yorkers were scathing about them and part of their low opinion of the boys could also be attributed to the M&A that existed between New Yorkers and New Englanders because of their different political cultures, the macro-localist strand. While some settlers across the grants took New York up on the quit rents, the Yorkers were largely confined to Cumberland County in the Southeast. In my mind, these type of people were the kind that would have been in Boston in the 1760s and would be concerned by the mob's destruction of Thomas Hutchinson's house. There were exceptions like Nathan Stone, who attempted to shut down a court in the 71 and chased a Yorker lawyer called John Grout out of Windsor. His and his posse's behaviour showed a dislike amongst the East-siders for lawyers and atonists who in Cumberland County were rumoured to be just as corrupt as Benning Wentworth. Most Yorkers, however, craved law and order, repeatedly petitioning the New York authorities for a court in the region to deal with local criminals because it was too far to take prisoner to Albany in New York or a postman for New Hampshire. The leading Yorkers in the East were the Chandler families, Samuel Wells, Greenbrush, Charles Felt and Daniel Whipple, who were all either a tornage, judges or a sheriff. Charles Felt was a curious case regarded by many as a pain in the neck. He supported New York when he feared for his land and feared that New York wasn't going the way of the Patriots. He petitioned Massachusetts to claim ownership of the region before he returned to being in Vermont, before he returned to being a New Yorker again. He'd be a constant for in Vermont's side until his death. Eventually, the Vermont authorities got him to pledge allegiance to the state in his old age, but in one final act of resistance and after his death in the 1780s, he proclaimed in his will that he was really a Yorker. Greenbrush served in the provincial Congress and was a loyalist who tried to prevent communication between the Congress and local committee of safety in Cumberland. He eventually ended up in New York and committed suicide before the start of the war. Samuel Wells served alongside the brush, but he would end up aligning himself with the Vermonters and serve an important role in the Hardiman negotiations as a letter carrier. The Continental Congress demanded his arrest, but he remained a free man. Indeed, I believe the final and somebody's associates actually warned them about potential arrest by the Continental Congress authorities and they eventually moved to Canada. In conjunction with Lowe's in the East, we also have the New Yorkers in the West, as I mentioned earlier, who actually resided in New York and petitioned to join the state of Vermont in 1781. They were accepted and formed the US and Union in greater Vermont until 1782. This group has proved to be a bit more mysterious so far. What I can say is that they felt neglected by the New York authorities, especially on military matters because they faced continual threats from the Native Americans. It may very well be that they were also New Englanders who had maybe moved northwards to secure land for their family survival, much like the islands. We then have the New Hampshireites who typically resided along both sides of the Connecticut River. Trade and origins led populations on either side to form a strong bond. In times on either side, we'd actually share ministers. Jeremy Belknap, the New Hampshire historian, recalled, before the revolution, the people of different parts of New Hampshire had but little connection with each other. Like the Yorkers, they were religiously conservative and they viewed the West Siders with suspicion. There was a key reason why the group's leader, Jacob Bailey, hesitated to get in bed with Ethan Allen, despite much overture from those in the West. Equally important in this group was Bezzaleo Woodward, Elijah Payne and John Wheelock, son of Elisa Wheelock, who ran Dartmouth College in the town of Hanover. They hoped to secure the college's future and grow increasingly weary of New York's political leaders over time. The population east of the Connecticut River felt neglected by the New Hampshire politics and the politicians and they believed they weren't properly represented. They denounced the property qualifications for those wanting to be in the legislature. They didn't like the fact that the New Hampshire constitution didn't contain a bill of rights and they also didn't like the fact the seat of government was in Exeter and it was too far away. They demanded a new constitution in the seat of government be moved to the center of the state. In March, 76, New Hampshire Times requested Vermont annex them, which Vermont agreed to do after a referendum. This initial Eastern Union, however, only lasted a matter of months. Fearing the consequences of Congress and losing one of the biggest allies in New Hampshire, the Vermont General Assembly dissolved the Union. Towns on either side of the Connecticut then met on multiple occasions and different plans were formed that once again reflected the sense of localism. They asked New Hampshire to annex Eastern Vermont to the state and at one point they even proposed the creation of a new state, between the sounds on either side of the river. In 1781, Vermont once again annexed towns east of the river this time it amounted to 43 towns. But once more, the Union was short-lived and Vermont dissolved the Union in 82 as the threat of war between the Pampsons and Vermont slowly rose and George Washington suggested that if Vermont relinquished both unions then they may be accepted into the United States. When the West Siders attempted to engineer the creation of a new state in 1776 for a series of conventions, the East Siders were predominantly absent. Only one East Side town sent a delegate to the Dorset Convention in 1776 where an association asked inhabitants to give themselves to the cause of the United American States in the creation of a War Commission. At the Westminster Convention on 15th of January 1777 where New Hampshire grants declared itself independent there were more East Side towns than West Side ones. Charles Minor Thompson argues the location of the convention was purposefully placed in the East to encourage more East Siders to attend and thus provide a greater show of unity towards independence. Only 11 East Side towns attended the convention but the Constitutional Convention in July showed a stark increase in numbers amongst East Siders. So what was the key reason perhaps for this? How was the constitution of New York which served as a pivotal turning point as well as the constitution of New Hampshire and led the people in the East to turn away towards the Vermont State? Conservative New York constitution kept Premogenture and Entail like the Hampshire constitution it did not contain a Bill of Rights. It also had a strong executive that could prorogue the legislature and strict property qualifications remained which would have disenfranchised many. To the Vermont Earth, the separatists like the island it was a God said who printed the document and dispersed it across the East. In January 1777, Bailey condemned the Westminster Convention and a letter to the New York Provincial Congress and he proclaimed, I do not look on myself as a member of any state but New York, but it's tuned changed by the summer. He wrote to the New York Council of Safety, I am apt to think our people will not choose any members to sit in the State of New York. The people before they saw the constitution were not willing to trouble themselves about a separation from the State of New York but now almost to a man, they are violent for it. The Vermont Constitution of 1777 was not something that Pennsylvania Constitution appealed a lot more to them. In early July 1777, 50 delegates from 31 towns gathered in Windsor at the Constitutional Convention. The document received its last reading on the 8th of July just as news spread of what defeat at the battle of Huberton and fought to Condoroga's fall. Written by Thomas Chittenden and Ira Allen, the preamble attacked New York for neglect of the population and the people were left with no option but to create their own government for quote, the security and protection of the community. The constitution safeguarded basic rights, write a fair trial by jury, write to former government, write to freedom of press, speech and public assembly, write to religious freedom with fine reason and also slavery was outlawed but people still had, there were still loopholes people found to get around that. You could see there was a localist mentioned to this whole constitution that was rooted in the micro-localism of the town which formed the center of the political system. It was in these town meetings that members to the unicameral legislature were elected and it was for these meetings that approval was given for the Constitutional Convention because Vermont lacked a legislature but suggests it was a true reflection of the people's political principles. The general assembly was composed of reference of each town, the number differing by the size of the town. Governor was a cabinet with positions such as the governor, treasurer, secretary of state and so on. You could hold multiple roles in government but you were at the mercy of the people for everything. Every position was up for election. The voting system revered to traditional New England style of town meetings which differed from the New York system of county representation and the proportional representation of Pennsylvania. Further, there was no proper qualification unlike New Hampshire, who demanded a poll tax. And Vermont wanted to be a male and over 21 to vote. The constitution also imposed community-orientated rules. The state was allowed to confiscate people's effects for the war effort and the people would be reimbursed for their troubles. Thus, kind of bringing people closer together and making them all part of this one mission. This fed into the confiscation and sequestration process that was about to unfold against the New Yorkers and the loyalists. As the Constitutional Convention took place, General John McGowan and the British Army snaked through Western Vermont, which alarmed the delegates in Windsor. Typically, the New Hampshire Grant settlers are portrayed as a patriot stronghold. Until 1775, however, there was little of any mention in the region of the ongoing imperial crisis between the colonies in Britain. It was Ethan Allen, the Green Mountain Boys and troops from Connecticut with Benedict Arnold, who struck one of the first blows to Britain in the Revolutionary War by sacking fort to Conderoga. And Ethan Allen was on appearance as patriotic as it came when it concerned the USA. How far was this true? Certainly, the New Hampshire Grant settlers expressed their opposition to Britain in 1775, as local committees of safety issued their own commitment to the continental Congress in the wake of the Battle of Lexington and Concord. Yet Allen admitted in 1976, quote, the old farmers on the New Hampshire grants were not inclined to go to war. In that same year, only 244 men joined Seth Warner's Green Mountain Boys Regiment, which meant he achieved less than half his allocated number of 500. Out of a population of 17,000 to 20,000, an estimated 50,000 serving the Continental Army, which represents about 7.5 to 8% of the population, I'm more than happy for you to correct my name if I'm wrong because I'm terrible at maps. And of course, not every single one of the grants inhabitants were eligible to serve in the war. When Jomber going first down Western Vermont on his way to Saratoga in 77, he was also able to call upon an estimated 1,500 people, namely in Western Vermont and in Northern New York. While St. Regions' leading figure advocated the invasion of Quebec, which aroused suspicion amongst outside figures, he accused them of holding to Conderlogan Crown Point as, quote, security to their land. Allen and Seth Warner mustered few men. When Allen was captured at Montreal in 75, his force consisted of 25 New Englanders and 85 Canadians. In 76, Warner commanded 170 men who were largely for Connecticut, not in the Quebec invasion, and 350 men at Long Yule, who again were largely from Connecticut. He was also accused of exaggerating his figures and receiving more bounty money as a result. When Burgoyne was based at Conderoga, it was not uncommon for people to join the British. 400 people met at Castleton to pledge allegiance to the British, but also they were not willing to get involved in the fighting. Two high-profile green mountain boys, Justice Sherwood and William Marsh, also jumped ship after Conderoga. In his plea to New Hampshire for more men, Ira Allen acknowledged, quote, that many more have taken protection of the British. Governor Morris complained about Philip Skeen, another leading figure in the Western New Hampshire grants, of, quote, courting for monitors with golden offers of validating their land. When it came to the militia, however, men signed up in their droves. The urge to sign up for a militia rather than the Continental Army doesn't suggest an antipathy towards the Patriots, but it does say that there was a blast to how far the Vaughan Monarchs would support the cause. Implies there was a suspicion of outsiders, an intense localism, especially one in one of the outsiders and the leading figure of the Northern Army was the New Yorker, Philip Schuyler. The Yorker, meanwhile, demonstrated a dedication to a state could take precedent over the National School, for they would refuse to serve for local militia and could buy their way out of selection with 18 pound or a cow. This happened in 79 when the Continental Army asked for the militia to defend the frontier and one group refused, which led to two cows being seized and the New York mob freeing them in protest against, quote, the pretended state of Vermont. An analysis of how Vaughan Monarchs dealt with its loyalists further weakens the argument that this was a bastion of Patriot support. The brainchild of Ira Allen to pay for the new state's expenses, confiscation and sequestration quotes were created on both sides of the Green Mountains in 1777. They targeted loyalists and Yorkers by using the vague description, quote, enemies of the state. A few loyalists were in fact targeted by it and it was primarily Yorkers who felt the brunt of the process. Indeed, after a Pony Finale returned from captivity, there was one incident where I believe it was about 18 Yorkers were rounded up and taken out at the Albany to be imprisoned for being loyalists. When they arrived in Albany, the Yorkers told the New York authorities that they were not loyalists, they were just New Yorkers. Although one loyalist was hanged in the state, there were rare instances of aggression against loyalists. Typically, they were fined and forced to stay on their properties until a decision had been made or they'd pay the fine. In one instance, a town requested the cessation of the process of sequestration and confiscation. If you're a loyalist and knew someone in high places, then you could use the description. Samuel Wilde's the perfect example. He was a loyalist who ended up in the Vermont General Assembly. A number of other reputed loyalists were Matthew Leon, Luke Notan, and Mika Townsend who achieved high positions in Vermont politics. Indeed, Matthew Leon would become a very well-known figure in the late 1790s and 1800s as part of the Jefferson Republicans. In 1779, the government passed a punishment act but then a year later repealed the act and allowed the loyalists to return if they pleased. It was a policy of forgive and forget from the Vermonters. Colonel Peter Olcott complained to the Council of Safety in 1777, several of my men deserted over to the enemy after being drafted to go to Ticonderoga. We're going about one mom fan returned. The question is, what must be done with these men? Ireland replied that they should be reintegrated into society so long as they were willing to fight for the state. I certainly say that Vermonters were patriot supporters and loyalist sympathisers. Rather again, I think that their support had their limits and those limits involved the state and their local community. The survival of the state was of the greatest importance and the survival of the state meant the survival of their land. And if this meant getting along with the supported enemy, then so be it. In the years that followed, Vermonters would become known for the arrival of loyalist refugees and deserters. One famous quote by George Washington, which will appear later on and is quite well known amongst Vermonters, especially in the archives. And few Vermonters appeared to complain about their arrival. Ireland would encourage loyalist merchants and they would take up land in northern Vermont. Ethan Allen suggested support for the Patriots' wars as much self-interest as it was about showing loyalty to the brethren in New England and the other states. The Vermonters hoped he said that by carrying out their duty for the continent, the continental Congress would reward them and by recognising their land titles and accepting the state into the Union. However, this acceptance was not forthcoming. Far from accepting it, the Congress appeared to actually abandon the northern frontier. Initially, it took cannons from Ticonderoga, much to Ireland's annoyance, and later refused the Vermonters access to the Continental Army arsenal in Bennington. Petition after petition for acceptance to the Union was refused by the Continental Congress and the Congress continually kicked out the road, which started to inspire a sense of disillusionment amongst Vermonters. Rather than recognising them, Congress appeared to actually be gearing up to decimate it in the event of a U.S. victory for it requested New Hampshire and Massachusetts to submit their claims to the land. It seemed that enemies lay on every side of Vermon, and so instead, Britain and Frederick Haldeman. Now, I won't go into too much detail about the Haldeman negotiations. Once more, they have been covered in extensive detail by Vermon historians through the ages, and as I'll make clear later, the opinion on them differ wildly between historians. The British had kept track of the land dispute for some time, of course, because they were the supreme authority, they were the ones that were to deal with the issue as a whole between New York and New Hampshire. But after the defeat in 1777 at Saratoga, it attempted a new method of bribing different states and individuals to rejoin the empire in order to divide the states. It saw the sense of localism that was in America at the time, and it sought to use it to its advantage. The approach deepened Ireland in 79 and offered him everything that the Vermonters wanted if they'd returned to the British Empire. Land validation, free trade of Canada, recognition of Vermont government, and protection from the U.S. by British troops. With the course of 79 to 81, Ireland and Junto in the shape of Ireland and Joseph Faye negotiated with the British. Negotiations have caused much debate amongst historians, while some claim the negotiations were genuine. Others have insisted that they were merely applied to stop an invasion by the British and keep the U.S. interested in Vermont and possibly bait the Continental Congress into accepting Vermont into the Union. Personally, I think negotiations started off as a possible ploy to get into the Union, but as time passed and acceptance looked increasingly remote, the Junto were genuine in their negotiations. This could be backed up by the fact that they wrote two letters, one to Congress and negotiations were applied, and another to the British that claimed that they were genuine in their attempts. To the passage of time, Frederick Hardemand and Justice Sherwood, who were the two leading figures for Britain in negotiations and rendezvous, believed Vermont was just playing for time. The fact that the members of the Junto continued to pepper Hardemand into the 1780s, requesting access to Quebec for free trade and claiming Vermont was ready to join the British Empire again suggests that they were also genuine. And so what did the Vermonters think about these intrigues? If an ally admits that he feared what would happen if the Vermonters would find out about these secret negotiations, I get the impression I've already spoke for many when he and Chittenden made it clear in pamphlets and correspondence that they were acting with pure self-preservation as the quote on your screen suggests. In reality, negotiations were not that much of a secret, in my opinion. Rumors and Vermons whirled about the negotiations. They appeared in a newspaper as far away as London and they were talked about in Albany. It seemed like quite a few people actually knew about them. Ethan Allen resigned his position in the militiam protest as the general assembly asked him questions about the rendezvous with the British and denounced him for his traitorous ways. Yeah, it seemed that there was a degree of disillusionment across Vermont with the Union and Allen might not have actually attempted them, had there not been some sort of chance that they might have worked. Multiple depositions to New York Governor Henry Clinton showed a disillusioned people. Samuel Wells told one person that the US declared war on Vermont, then they would be supported by 10 to 15,000 British soldiers from Canada. Of course, Daniel Wells was a loyalist, but there were others. Judge John Bridgeman told one individual quote that Congress had no business to interfere with the present Union of Vermont and New Hampshire. He later told town of the church, damn the Congress, curse the Congress. Have we waited long enough on them, a pox on them? I wish they would come to the mill now. I would put them between these millstones or under the water wheel. They have sold us like a cursed old horse. They have no business with our affairs. We know no such body of men. At a pub in Brattleboro, another individual declared, as long as the King and Parliament of Great Britain approved of and would maintain the state of Vermont, he was determined to drive it and so were its leaders. Another was overheard saying that in less than 24 hours that it was established by the King of Great Britain. David Lam spoke about his encounter with a state attorney who complained, we was deceived by Congress. We depended upon a decision resolution from them because that he talked with three of the members. They told him it was not Vermont's policy to come into Union with the 13 United States, that they did not determine not to have anything to do with Congress for they had strength enough to defend their state and policy enough to regulate their laws of the state. In the years that followed, the Vermonters continued to place their faith in the Arlington Junto, even though there was a rising conservative movement in the state, which was caused by an influx of wealthy individuals from the southern New England. Over the course of the 1780s, Vermont operated as an independent state that belonged to neither the United States or the Empire. Some would say that they were an independent nation. For most, they validated their own lands by giving them themselves the authority to validate their lands. They weren't going to allow either the Empire or the US to take those lands away from them. Tent standoffs between New Hampshire and Vermont and New York occurred that raised the very real prospect of civil war happening. The quote on this slide is from George Washington, warning Joseph Jones about the prospect of civil war with the Vermonters. As you can see, he says, the country is very mountainous, full of defiles and extremely strong. Inhabitants, for the most part, are a hardy race composed of that kind of people who are best calculated for soldiers. And truth, who are soldiers? For many, many hundreds of them are deserters from this army. Who having acquired property there would be desperate in the defense of it, well known that they were fighting with altars about their necks. They also, the Vermonters minted their own currency which showed their desire to be a part of a union with the United States, but the union continually rejected them. Southern states were not willing to have another state which would tip the balance in the favor of the North, again showing an element of this macro-localism. New York continued to be a stubborn roadblock. The number of Yorkers slowly drained away as the Vermont government compelled them into submission by harassing them. They repeatedly petitioned Clinton to intervene, but all Clinton could give them was empty words and gestures that left them as disillusioned with New York as Vermont was disillusioned with the Continental Congress. Some took land offered by New York and moved away, but many remained in the state and accepted their fate. Nathaniel Chipman, Isaac Tickner, among other conservatives who later become Federalists slowly gained control of the Vermont politics, but they were never able to completely shift those who had been loyal to Allen in the idea of an independent Vermont. A free trade agreement was signed with Quebec in 86 that provided the settlers with an economic outlet through Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River. Chittenden recorded the highest number of votes as governor in 1797, but he did not meet the threshold. The conservatives finally had the chance to get Vermont into the Union by installing a pro-union voice as governor, so they duly chose Moses Robinson. He achieved statehood, but he was out again within the year and replaced by Chittenden. The ratification convention voted unanimously for statehood, but dissent persisted. There were reports of few people turning up to actually elect representatives to the convention, which may mean it was parted by conservatives. It's said in one of the larger towns only 19 people turned up to vote for the representative. Either way, Vermont was now part of the Union and it has been ever since. Nevertheless, this didn't stop a sense of localism transcending their nationalism. The majority of Vermonters opposed the War of 1812 because it impacted their trade with the British Quebec. Also, they were supposed to be at war with Britain. They were also feeding the enemy, leading them to be denounced as rebels and traitors by those outside of Vermont. But the Vermonters do what Vermonters want, as George Washington suggested in 1783. And so in 1812, John Adams reflected on the American Revolution and alerted Benjamin Rush. We were about, he estimated, one for Tories, one for Timid, and one for True Blue. Vermont was a timid state. There was a fluidity about their allegiance. It doesn't necessarily mean that they vacillated between red or blue, for there were independent states that were operating alongside the confederation. Each state had their own interests and ideas and in the earliest years, few, if any, were willing to forsake those for the Union. Arguably the only way to look at the political games being played when it came to Vermont's entry to see the different dynamics that were actually elsewhere. Organic states popped up elsewhere in their back countries because people wanted to secure their voice, their land, their futures for the trade. People were more concerned with their own states and regions than they were about this Union. The sign suggests that Vermonters were overwhelmingly patriots and I won't disagree with that, but I will say that their support had its limits. The support of the American cause long as it didn't infringe too much on our way of life, on the state that they had created, which enabled them to possess a voice. Once that voice was threatened, they were happy to look elsewhere or go at it alone. Did they do to speak for majority of Vermonters when they participated in the Hardman negotiations? Don't think they did, because I don't think the Vermonters were inclined to return to the brash. They would have probably put up resistance to that, but this does not suggest that they weren't said fast as a part of the Union, who appeared the Union was failing them. So they took their destiny into their own hands and they functioned as an independent state for 14 years. With that, I come to the end of my presentation and I'd like to thank you again for listening today or in the case of Scotland tonight. Thank you. Thank you so much, Benjamin. Yay. That was a great presentation. Thank you. I heard two names in particular that you mentioned in this presentation that have personal connections to the homestead, the land that is part of our nonprofit museum. I heard you mentioned William Marsh, who was a Green Mountain boy at Fort Ticonderoga, but he's one of the examples you brought up of someone who then switched to the other side and he fought for the British. Yes. That fluidity of allegiance there. Well, so some of our participants here might not know, but William Marsh is actually the man who has the first recorded British land ownership of that land. So he's the first British person to purchase the homestead land. And it's actually, he lost that land through the confiscation of the enemies of the state. And it's from then the state of, or the Republic of Vermont that the Allen family purchased the homestead land. That's how Ethan Allen got it as it was taken from William Marsh after he switched sides. A second name that you mentioned that has a personal connection to the homestead is Korean Brush, who was the adoptive father of Fanny, Montresour, Brush, Buchanan, Allen Pennyman. And the name Allen is in her name because she married Ethan Allen in the 1780s and then moved to the homestead site in 1780s. And so, and her story is an example of what you were talking about. How about how Vermont, their policy near the end of the war and after the war was really one of just like forgiveness and reconciliation with people of all these different loyalties. Because Fanny Allen and her family were very much New Yorkers and very much in the British army. And yet she married Ethan Allen who was the rallying point really for the rebels in Vermont. So an interesting example there too, I think of that fluidity of people's allegiances and how localism may have transcended these national arguments. Okay, so we are gonna open the floor now for Q&A. So basically how this is gonna work is if you, Benjamin, maybe you could stop sharing your screen so that we could see people there. Okay, so if anybody has a question, if you have your video on, you could just physically raise your hand and I could call on you and you can unmute or if you don't wanna have your video on, you can use the raise hand function in Zoom or you could type it into the chat box and put it in the chat box as well. Can I just say by the way, this is like the most people I've ever presented to. It was terrifying. Usually I'm used to only one or two people. Okay, I see Sarah has her hand up. Go ahead, Sarah. Well, I'll just try to get the ball rolling by asking how a Scotsman became interested in this aspect of US history, which is near and dear to all of us. Yeah, it's a good question. One I usually always get asked. So my original project was actually on the loyalist refugees and they returned to America after the Revolutionary War. And so I was carrying out like literature review and I kind of, things were working in my mind where I thought, right, if I have to do this project, I'm gonna have to go to probably 13 different states, probably go to the Caribbean, somehow get to Canada, somehow get to the end days or whatever like that. I thought there's no way I could afford to do that and it'd be tough with regards to funding. So as I was carrying out the reading, literature review, I noticed that nobody really was talking about Vermont. Like, I remember like Gordon Woods, one of Gordon Woods books, it's literally just not even a paragraph, it's like half a paragraph, you get a mention of Vermont and that's it. And coincidentally, as I was doing that, I'd actually been to Vermont in 2010 for skiing in Killington. And a photo popped up on my screen, on my iPad, it was like one of those screensaver things. And I thought, you know what, what's going on, what's going on in Vermont at this time? Let's have a wee look and see what's going on there. And so yeah, that's kind of how I ended up getting onto this topic. So originally it was going to be on the loyalists of Vermont, depend on the sources, came over. Unfortunately, there wasn't too many sources there, but what I have now started to notice was this idea of localism and this fluidity of allegiance and looking at how people are dealing with these multiple motivations that are running parallel to each other. John Devano, who's in the other account that's titled Ethan Alam Homesteading New York. John, if you could just double check your chat box to see if anyone sent you a private chat with a question. I am looking in my chat box and I have a question from Susan. Susan says, sorry, she joined a little late. No problem, Susan, at all. And just a reminder, this is recorded. It'll later be up on our YouTube page. They can catch whatever you missed at the end. So Susan is wondering about the fact that this area, like Vermont was originally New France previously. And also the role of the indigenous people in France, in these alliances, including those peoples' ancestors or descendants. And how did those people make these complicated and fluid choices as the hostilities went forward? Have you looked at those sources? This is Susan's question. Yeah, it's a good question. Actually, I've just been rereading the brief, no, it wasn't the brief, I've got it actually right here. I've been rereading it again. I'm forgetting the title of it. It was Ira Allen. It was some miscellaneous remarks by Ira Allen where he actually makes mention to New France and the arguments are put forward by New York where I believe it was the Mohawk Indians that lived in that general region. It might be wrong there, it was Mohawk Indians generally lived there. And so they claim that they had jurisdiction over the land as the Mohawk came into the British, I believe. And also that the British had won the land from the New French, which could then extend up into Canada and just short of south of the St Lawrence River. Unfortunately, I've not found anything in particular on the French. I've not came across anything like that in my studies. I think that might be more, might be more something to do with looking into Canada perhaps, but nothing really of note about the French and indigenous people in the Champlain Valley. Again, I've not really found anything in the archives with regards to that or in the historical society. If I was able to find something with that would be, that would be amazing and I would certainly have a look again. And even if it meant extending it into having a look in Canada, to putting on money and everything, yeah, I would certainly have a look. So unfortunately, I can't ask to go too much detail into that one, but yeah, sorry about that. I'm going to call out somebody who's in the audience here to connect you to also, hopefully Skyler is actually listening and hasn't stepped away. I know that he has a family with young children. So he's tough the way that would be understandable, but Skyler Bailey is one of the participants here. And Skyler Bailey is actually a descendant of another person you mentioned in your talk, Jacob Bailey from Newbury, Vermont. So Skyler, I don't know if you're actually there at this moment or if you wanted to say anything else about your connection to your ancestor there. Do work, can you hear me? Yes, hi Skyler. I may re-mute there. The two small children you mentioned are just nearby and could start causing mayhem at any moment. So we'll see. Yeah, so I was actually, I had a question as well, but Jacob Bailey was my sixth great-grandfather. He lived in the town of Newbury, Vermont. And my family remained in that town until the 1920s when my grandfather moved to Burlington. And we've been here ever since. And I grew up with not a ton of stories about the time period, but certainly a general sense that Ethan Allen was not such a great guy and not someone that we in the family think very highly of. As you mentioned, they were political rivals at that time. I was curious if there was anything in your research or in the project in general that you found particularly surprising to you? Good question. And in general, I mean, this is part of the thing as well as coming from an outside perspective. And also my general background was until because of circumstances out with my control leading up to the PhD, this is my first dissertation actually on American history. And in fact, I studied the American Revolution at undergraduate level, but I never went totally in depth to it. So this was my first real exposure to pretty much everything American Revolution. And I think as Joan Freeman in her podcast, she talks about this as one of the key things to keep in mind. And one of the things that I'm guilty of to start with was you tend to see the U.S. as the U.S. about the 13 colonies as maybe what they would have been today, these 13 states, part of our national government. And so what really surprised me was actually this sense of localism that really was across the North America. It really was, really did splinter the different colonies in the different regions. And it makes even more impressive that they were actually able to get through and create this union and then not just create it, but then sustain it as well. So that was probably one of the most surprising things. It's the central part of my thesis. And yeah, I'm kind of surprised a wee bit in how little attention Vermont has received from historians to be honest with you. Because the Northern frontier was, I mean, I'm probably biased here. It's probably quite important to North America in general. You know, the Seven Years War was based a lot in the Lake Champlain, the Champlain Valley. And if the British came, if the British were successful in the Revolutionary War or going got his way, then that could have been game over before it even began. I did manage to get down and meet one of the Howe brothers in New York. It was luckily just because we're going for some reason decide to take a different route and cut out on it. So maybe it was destiny. It was meant to be. Well, awesome talk and I've been really enjoying it. And thanks for your research. Okay. And thank you for your feedback. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thank you for letting me put you on the spot there. We do have time for one more question. And while you're thinking about what your question might be, I want to share with Benjamin and with everyone here that Suzanne has added in some, some further insight to follow up with her question about French and Indigenous peoples and how they may have been affected by these allegiance switchings and going on. She wrote in the comment box that some of the people that she might, she was thinking of particularly that could be studied were families who were stationed in the lake by France prior to the French and Indian War, as well as Hazen's Regiment in the Revolutionary War. And she suggested a book if anyone's interested in studying these groups of people called Congress's Own by Holly Mayer, which she says it's about Quebec folks who fought for America. And I also thought when you were answering Suzanne's question, the only French people I remember you mentioning were those who were with Ethan Allen when he was captured as well. So maybe that's to be added to the list as another group of people in this demographic. Yep, absolutely. Just to make you more complicated. Not complicated enough. There's not enough sides for people to join and switch between. No, I try to study it. Oh, God. OK, so we do have time for one more question if there is a question. And then you can also I'll put the email address for the museum in the chat box. So if you wanted to email your question, I can always forward it to Benjamin there as well. OK, let me just double check the second screen. I can't see everyone on one screen. So I want to make sure I'm not missing everyone. OK, so seeing more questions at this point, then I want to thank everybody for coming to this program. And can you please all help me thank Benjamin one more time for his wonderful presentation? Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yes, absolutely. So, Ben, if you could just stick on for another minute and then everyone else, I hope to see you. I hope to see you become members of the museum so you can join us on the December 2nd, 3rd. What is that Saturday? I'm giving the talk. I shouldn't know. December 3rd. I'm hoping you can join us for our members only presentation. Thank you, everyone, and have a great holiday week.