 Well, welcome, everyone. We are live at the Founders' Tavern here at the San Homestead Museum. We welcome you to our third Sunday of the month lecture for the month of May. Today's talk is entitled, Ethan Allen, Boom, Crockett and Other Contemporary Frontiersmen. And our speaker is Don Miller. As I said, he was sitting right next to me here. Before we begin, I would like to thank the following businesses for their financial support, AARP Vermont, Vermont Humanities, BurlingtonCars.com, 802 Cars and Home Light Investment. So just a few words about our speaker. Don Miller is an active student of history, past president of the Bennington Historical Society and currently a board member of the Vermont Historical Society. His presentation today will focus on three well-known folk heroes. What do these contemporaries have in common? How are they different? What role does Allen, our folk hero, play in our Vermont story? And by the way, there will be a question and answer period at the end of this talk. So please participate. And at this time, I will turn this over to our speaker, Don. Thank you. I'll expand the title a little bit, the more complete, Ethan Allen. Folks of Frontiersman, Folk Hero, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and other contemporaries. My intent is to look at these people and in the light of real people. I don't think we give Ethan Allen enough credit. I think he deserves a lot of credit and I think he can hold his own with the Daniel Boone, the Davy Crocketts. And I'd like to see us do a better job in the state of Vermont at promoting him. You know, that's where I come from. Frontiersman, Folk Hero, contemporaries. Frontiersman first. I define that as somebody who's born and raised in one or more states then moves to a state that is under development, that has not been a state. It's one of those no supermarkets, no home depots, you're on your own. Folk Hero, these are real people, not all Bunions. These are people who went into those frontiers, made decisions, they weren't always right. They weren't always great decisions, but they were real people. And sometimes their actions got exaggerated for good or for bad, but they were folk heroes. And we ought to appreciate them for what they did for us. Contemporaries, that's a tough one for Crockett. Allen moved to Vermont in like 1760s and Vermont became the 14th state in 1791. Kentucky became a state in 1792, Tennessee in 96, and Ohio in 1803. So, and these three states had their own frontiersmen, Daniel Boone from Kentucky, Davey Crockett from Tennessee and Simon Kenton, which I hope to be able to get to at the end. And they're all, they all became states within a 12 year period, this was quick. None of them were colonies, they're all developed from the frontier. Crockett, he's the most problematic by my definitions, but he's probably the best known example of a frontiersman we have, according to Walt Disney, let me quote, Davey Crockett was born on a mountain top in Tennessee, greenest state in the land of the free, raised in the woods so he knew every tree, killed him a bar or bear when he was only three, Davey Crockett, Davey Crockett, king of the wild frontier. Well, I think that's slight exaggeration. Born on a mountain top in Tennessee, no, he was born in North Carolina in a part of North Carolina that became Tennessee. So he doesn't meet my definition of being born somewhere else and then moving in to an undeveloped territory. In fact, when he was 10 years old, Tennessee became a state. He was born in 1786 and Tennessee achieved statehood in 1796. So he was, he grew up in what was a state. Doesn't meet my definition of a frontiersman, but was he wrong? No, Disney, that is. Crockett was a frontiersman perhaps with regard to Florida, Alabama and Texas. Florida and Texas both became states 50 years later, 1845. But he was a frontiersman, but not a contemporary not a frontiersman in Tennessee. Maybe we'll have a chance to look at who was. So we want to expand. Okay, so boom, let's go back to boom was, Allen was born in 1734, excuse me, 1738 and boom was born in 1734. So they're only four years apart. Crockett, as I said, was born in 1786, 52 and 58 years later. So he's really a couple of generations behind, but he's still the best known frontiersman. So there's a lot of parallels that we can draw. Crockett was a back woodsman, but he ran for Congress five times in Tennessee. He won three times, which means two times more people voted against him than voted for him. So he wasn't always popular and none of these frontiersmen did everything right and were always popular. Crockett was larger than life like a legend. His maiden speech in Congress gives us a clue. I'm the same David Crockett, you have an advantage. I'm the same David Crockett, fresh from the back woods, half horse, half alligator, a little touched with a snapping turtle, can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, work right upon a streak of lightning and slip without a scratch down a honey locus, can whip my weight in wild cats. And if any gentleman pleases for a $10 bill he may throw in a panther. Hug a bear too close for comfort and eat any man opposed to Jackson. Well, Crockett clearly bought into a legend and played it for all it was worth. He went on to tell the congressman that the next time he stood up, he would talk straight talk and he wouldn't be talking legend, but that's part of being a folk hero. Is the legend that grows around the stretch of the imagination. Back to Ethan and I wanna draw these parallels. I believe that Ethan Allen understood the power of legend. As a young man growing up in Connecticut, he took issue with those in authority whether it be the church or local politicians. By the way, if you notice these two photos, this is Ethan Allen here in front of the state house with the right hand up. And this is a picture of David Crockett before he goes to Texas, right hand up in pretty much the same pose. I think that's funny that we didn't have photos from the time, but they all must look alike. Talking about Ethan Allen and how he didn't, he wasn't afraid to challenge authority. And this got him into a lot of trouble. Sophisticus, impromptu wrestling matches. He also found himself in court representing himself and quite often. And his use of the law was sometimes very common. For example, his understanding of pig law was that one pig pen is good as another. That came about because in towns back there in Connecticut, if a pig got loose, you're supposed to take him to the town pig pen. Well, Allen found one loose, but he took him to his own pig farm and he got sued. And so he went to court, argued, but he lost. He lost a number of those battles in the final left Connecticut. But when he came to Vermont, he was 32 years old and he'd learned a hard lesson about fighting legal battles in someone else's court. He learned to play a different game and to create and play the legend. And here we might refer to the 1970, or excuse me, 1770 Ejectment Trials, where he was hired by the settlers of the Vermont grants to defend the Hampshire grant titles. And he went to New York and he found out that Vermonters don't necessarily get a fair play in New York courts. So he came back and formed the Green Mountain Boys. And there he owned his ability to like Crockett, to think and to speak on his feet. He crafted the image of a tough talking tough guy. He was a physically giant man. He was over six, about six foot four, wearing well over 200 pounds. While Boone and Crockett, who were both considered big, were only about five eight. So he was quite large and could play the role of a bully with some effect. Not coincidentally, Ethan could out drink the boys at the tavern. Size is a great advantage when controlling alcohol or the boys. I doubt if he ever lost control, but he learned to manipulate crowds and young men. To his credit, he knew how to appeal to the instincts of the Green Mountain Boys and the Sheriff's bosses. It is significant, I think, that in the five years that he was the leader of the Green Mountain Boys, he, nor they, ever killed anyone. They did a lot of things, burning, running people off, but never killing. And I think this was a controlled thing. He understood escalation, he understood mob psychology and he wouldn't allow the situation to escalate out of control. And I'll give you an example a little bit later. Do it over there. Okay, back to Crockett. Indian fighter, this may well have been one of the biggest exaggerations. His Indian fighting was a little bit sparse, a little bit exaggerated. He was an Andrew Jackson fan, and in 1802, Jackson was appointed Major General of the Tennessee Militia. In 1813, which is also referred to in that, the next stanza of that poem, the Creek War evolved and Jackson called for some volunteers. Well, Crockett volunteered for a 90 day period. He spent most of his time hunting for the Army. He figured his skills were more suited to killing deer than in confronting Indians. He didn't fight the Indians very much. In a year later, the War of 1812 was honest, Jackson was promoted to General in the US Army. And again, he called for Tennessee volunteers. This time, Crockett volunteered for six months. And he went down for three months. He again, served more in the capacity to foraging for food than in fighting the Indians. After three months, he went home and hired a young man. Crockett was only 27, I don't think that's very old. But he hired a young man to go back and serve out the remaining three months of his commitment. So I don't think Ethan Allen would have done that. I think he would have taken it all the way. And from there, Crockett became kind of a legislator. He was more of a statesman, back woodsman perhaps, but he ran for two terms in the state house. And then five times, as I mentioned, he ran for Congress and he got beat two times. One time, he had voted against the Indian Removal Act. That's the act that created the Trail of Tears, moving the Indians from the southeastern United States out to Oklahoma. It was a law that Andrew Jackson favored and supported and promoted. And Crockett was the only member of the Tennessee Congressional delegation to vote against it. Jackson was popular in Tennessee and Crockett ended up losing that election. Toward the end of that fifth term, and Jackson's term as president was coming to an end, Martin Van Buren was the vice president and it looked like he would gain the nomination and the presidency. And that's when Crockett said, if he's gonna become president, I'm going to Texas. And he did. Martin Van Buren became president and Crockett went to Texas. He left in 11, and this picture is about that time. On November 1st of 35, when Crockett was 49 years old, he heads off to Texas, but he stops along the way. He only had three people that started with him. He stopped in Jackson, Mississippi, picked up another 30 people, stopped in Little Rock, Arkansas. They had big parties and big promotions and then finally in January 14th, he ended up in Nacogotius, Texas, where with 65 men, he took an oath to serve the provincial government of Texas for six months. The other side of that promise was every volunteer would get 4,600 acres of land. I'm not sure that makes you a volunteer, but before he left, his youngest daughter who was like 13 remembered him leaving in Deerskin and with the rifle. And she had the distinct impression that Crockett would be inviting them all, the whole family down to Texas very soon. Well, that didn't work out very well. They were quite outnumbered at the battle of the Alamo. We got to the Alamo in March, I think it was. And the battle of Alamo really only lasted 90 minutes. I mean, they were there for a long time shooting back and forth, but when the final battle came, it was quick and everybody was killed. Okay, let's move on to Boone. Boone is much more of a contemporary, much more of a peer. He was born in the log cabin in Pennsylvania near Redding in 1734. In 1750, his family moved to North Carolina when he was only 16. And he did the obligatory type things for being a frontiersman who wasn't running away from things. Some people moved out into the frontier to run away, but he didn't. He served in the French and Indian war at age 20. He was part of one of the first of the expeditions to Fort Duquesne serving General Braddock with the general. This is the one where Braddock got killed on the way and it was a terrible, terrible loss. The Braddock was buried in the road and covered over so that his body wouldn't be removed and mutilated. But Boone's role as a 20-year-old, he was a teamster and a blacksmith. So he was way in the background. Another young American, 22-year-old George Washington was a colonel in the Virginia militia on that same venture. So, but it was a disaster. And then back along the way, the Cherokee uprising in 1758, Boone participated in that. And then in 1744, which we'll mention again, Dunmore's war, he participated as a messenger. The Dunmore's war was not much of a war, it was like one battle, half-baked battle. But that was an important battle out there because it's when the Shawnee gave up their rights to Kentucky and agreed, they always used Kentucky just as a hunting land and they lived in Ohio, but they agreed to stay in Ohio and not to challenge the Kentuckians further after 1774. That didn't really hold that there were still Indians on the prow committing all kinds of problems. Now, during this time period, Boone was in his 20s and he was an active hunter and trapper. That's how he made living to support his family. He had quite a large family and he supported them by hunting and trapping. This is what you expect of a frontiersman. He actually didn't make his first trips into Kentucky until 1767 and when he went with his brother, Squire, and then his third trips were in 68 and 69. The 69 trip, that was a two-year trip. He took five gentlemen with him and that's what this picture here shows, probably. And I think this was the first year orvis that don't have a wide range of garb. They're all dressed the same, right? So anyway, I'm sure that's what it was. Now, Kentucky developed a little bit slower than Vermont. Vermont was first settled by the Europeans in 1761. David Robinson and Jedediah Dewey down in Bennington and it developed fairly quickly. Because of the Indians, Kentucky was a little bit slower. We had the Dunmores War in 74 and in 75, Richard Henderson bought the Cherokee rights to Kentucky. Henderson didn't have any right to buy them or Cherokee didn't have any right to sell them but that's what happened. Things happened that weren't quite right, didn't make sense, but those are important steps in clearing the way to settlement. So in 1773-ish, Boone was part of the first group of British colonists that settled in Kentucky. He wasn't the leader, but he was one of the group. And then in 1775, he moved into Kentucky and created Boonesboro about the same time as Harrisburg right nearby was built. These were dated communities, they were forts. And because of the, even then there's still Indian threat and that's what they had to do. And it was actually the year two before that, 1774, that Boone started cutting the way through the wilderness gap. I guess you can find the wilderness gap, no big deal. And so they're just moving, they're really starting to move in in the 75. And in 76, something interesting happened, there's a wilderness gap. And if we go on to the next slide, what happened in 76 was that his daughter and two other girls were captured by the Indians outside of Boonesboro. And Boone followed them, took them two days to catch up and rescue them. It was one of the most important stories in Boone legend. And some say, I believe it's probably correct that James Centimore Hooper fashioned that story into the last of the Moheagans. You know, there's quite a bit different fact line, but nonetheless, he presumably used that as an example and inspiration in writing the book. Now, a couple of years later, oh, that's not unusual. Again, drawing parallels, Ethan Allen's family got captured in Vermont. The bad guys were called Yorkers. And in 1772, his cousin, remember Baker, was captured by the Yorkers. They came in in the early morning hours, broke into the house with swords, cut up his wife, cut him up, took him out and this was in March. The snow outside, freezing cold, took him in his night clothes, headed toward Albany. The Green Mountain boys got right on the trail and within 24 hours or a little more, they caught up and rescued Baker and brought him back. So it didn't matter where the frontier was, you either had Indians capturing your family or the Yorkers. And I suggest that's one of the places where Ethan Allen showed his medal. He did not escalate. This was continually escalating. You had the ejectment trials, you had the Breckenridge standoff in 71 where the Yorkers tried to kick James Breckenridge off his farm, then the Yorkers put a bounty on the heads of the Green Mountain boys. Remember Baker was one of the captains of the Green Mountain boys and they picked Baker to deliver a message. And breaking into the house with sword and drawing blood, that was an escalation. Ethan Allen never let it, he could have easily escalated and blood for blood, but he didn't. I believe he put the escalation to rest and held it down for the next three or four years while the Green Mountain boys were dealing with the Yorkers. Okay, moving forward. In 1778, Goon led 30 men on a mission to get salt. This is up in the Licking River north part of Kentucky. Getting salt was important for preservation of food and things like that. So he took a work party of 30 some people. While he was out getting meat for the work party, he got captured by Blackfish warriors, large band much bigger than the 30 and Goon did a couple of things. He said, don't attack my 30 guys, you'll massacre them, we'll give up, we'll surrender, you can take us back to Ohio. And then he convinced the Indians not to march on Goonsboro and he said, we will make them, we will surrender them in the summer. Whoa. So the Indians bought that. The 30 guys were taken captive. The council that Shawnee council voted not to kill them to spare their lives. Daniel Goon ran the gauntlet, which is a traditional type of thing, two lines of Indians a quarter mile long with sticks and clubs and run the guy down and beat him up. And then he was adopted by the Shawnee. These are two things that happened to others along the way. Then in the summer, this was in January, in the summer of 78, Goon got to win that Black chief was now ready to attack Goonsboro and he was gonna go forward. Goon escaped and traveled the 160 miles and five days on a horse until the horse collapsed and then he finished up on foot. And he got there in time to prepare Goonsboro and defend and in September, Blackfish came and there was a 10 day siege and that was repelled. So he saved Goonsboro, but some of the men were not happy. Ben Logan and Richard Callahan names that you see in Ohio history and Kentucky history. They thought that Goon enjoyed the Shawnee too much, that he'd been a traitor, that he shouldn't have given up the men and offered to surrender Goonsboro. And so they brought a court martial against Goon. Goon was found innocent, but the point is he was heavily criticized and considered a traitor by some. And I would draw another parallel if you think of the Halderman negotiations where, how do we describe that real quick? Allen had been captive by the British, but released in 78 so it's a little bit often time, but the idea is the same. Every year the people went to Philadelphia to become a part of and gain acceptance with the Continental Congress. New York put the veto to that every time. New York considered Vermont part of New York. They would not give in and allow Vermont to become an independent state, which is what led to Vermont becoming an independent Republican in 1777, which it was until 1791. And, but during that time the Vermont people felt threatened by New York governor with troops they felt threatened by the British who might come back down to Saratoga area and come in. And so they were becoming more and more isolated and they need not only were they threatened, they needed trade partners. And so the idea of perhaps developing trade with Britain and some thought of rejoining the British empire. And this didn't go well obviously with a lot of people who were critical of what Ethan Allen was doing. And it was not well known at the time there's more, a lot of been written about it, a lot of speculation, no one knows. My point is that the frontiersmen made decisions and they had to make fast decisions and the decisions weren't always right. What do we know? Maybe Ethan Allen was hoping that by threatening Miley or however, going back to England, then maybe Congress would give in and let them become members of the Continental Congress or who knows? I suspect that it was really just negotiation and positioning in when Cornwallis lost in 1781 at Jamestown, then the whole idea of getting back together with England would put on the back burner. And I think that's a clue, not definitively, but a clue that Allen was just using it as a negotiating tool with Congress. Okay, moving along, finishing up Boone. He was quite of a land speculator. After this time period, a lot of the land deals he made went sour. At one point he was doing quite well, he had seven slaves. He was a militia colonel, a sheriff, a county coroner and even elected to the Virginia State Assembly before Kentucky was made a state in 1792. So he was in great favor for a long time, but he was losing his eyesight and other things. And eventually, all of this financial world fell apart, started falling around his ears. And in 1799, he moved to Missouri where he lived the last 20 years of his life. And he always promised or hoped that he could pay off his debts, but he never fully paid off all the debts he had back in Kentucky. So the rise and fall of our heroes. Now, let me move forward to Simon Kenton. Let's see if we get another picture. This is Simon Kenton. He's from Ohio and he is a contemporary. He was born in 1755 in Virginia. So he's like 17 years younger than Ethan Allen, but he got to Kentucky in 1771 at the age of 16. Why? Well, he was kind of running away. I mentioned some people ran away. He got into a fight with an older gentleman over a girl who went to a dance or something. It was a knockdown drag out fight. And when Kenton woke up, he couldn't find the guy thought he killed him. So he got scared and ran to Kentucky from I think he was living in Virginia at the time. 16 years old with carrying nothing but what he had on his back. He got a temporary job, got a rifle, got a little grub steak and then went on to Kentucky in 1771. This was early in Kentucky's development. And he pretty much spent most of the time by himself along the northern edge of Kentucky along the Ohio River where other people coming down the Ohio River, he would serve as a scout or a guide. He'd say, don't go to Ohio, that's bad. Come over here in Kentucky, hide here, whatever. And in 1775, once Boonesboro was set up, he actually went and lived in Boonesboro for a while and befriended Daniel Boone. And in fact, in 1775 he was credited with saving Boone's life. Boone and he were outside the gates, outside the fence, they were attacked by Indians. Boone was shot in the ankle and Indian was hovering over him, ready to scalp him. And Simon Kenton came up, shot the Indian, clubbed another one, picked up Daniel Boone and then dodging and darting, carried him back into the fort. Kenton was a big guy. He was about as big as Ethan Allen, six foot three or four, well over 200 pounds. So he was a huge giant of a man. He, all the Indians respect him for his fighting, his riflemanship. He might have been the best technical frontiersman of the group in terms of the skills, the hunting and the fighting. And he himself in 1788 was captured by the Indians, just like Boone, and he had to run the gauntlet. But because he was such a famous white man, a spur in the side of the Indians, they took them around to nine Indian villages and made them run the gauntlet in every one. He had to run the gauntlet nine times. Even Boone only had to run it once. And he ended up with some broken bones and things like that, but he survived, quite remarkable. And he was later adopted. He was soon adopted as well, like Boone. He was adopted by the Indians. And then later on, he was exchanged in Detroit on a prisoner exchange. Okay, so during this time period, he got to see Ohio and Ohio itself was a later, even later than Kentucky to develop in large part because of those Indians, the Shawnee and others. The Indian's question didn't really get settled until like 1794 when Matt Anthony Wayne beat a large group of Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. And then in 1795, the Treaty of Greenville was signed by virtually all the major Indian groups. And Greenville was on the Indiana-Ohio border, 1795. And so after that, it was deemed safe to settle in Ohio. And Tenton was one of the first to take his family and settle in Ohio. And he did one of the things he should have known better. He bought a huge amount of land from the Indians. The Indians didn't own it. They knew they didn't own it. Tenton didn't have the right to buy it, just like Henderson and others in Kentucky. He was a laughing stock from the get-go. However much he paid, probably pretty much bankrupt. The part of Ohio he settled, Columbus is in the middle of the state. Dayton is about halfway to Indianapolis. In between Dayton and Columbus is where Springfield, Ohio and Urbana, Ohio. And that's the general area that Tenton lived in. There's a town named Tenton near there. And today is a big name. The Boy Scout Council is named after him, the Simon Tenton Boy Scout Council. So where's that thing? One quickie story, I think, to show his character that he was different. His nemesis, the big Indian chief was Tecumseh. Tecumseh was at the Treaty of Greenville, but it was a young buck and he didn't want to go along. And so Tecumseh was the last Indian to raise a huge confederation of other tribes. He tried to recruit Indians all the way down to Georgia, Florida, and his headquarters was up on the Tippie Canoe River at the Prophet Town. His brother was the Prophet and he took care of the town while Tecumseh was away. When Tecumseh left Prophet Town, he said, don't engage William Tecumseh. Don't, Henry Harrison, don't engage him in war. Harrison was the governor, the military governor of Indiana. The Prophet messed up, they got into a war. Harrison wiped out Tippie Canoe's village and that put an end really to Tecumseh's confederation. Confederation that was 1811, a year later in the War of 1812, Tecumseh supported the British in a battle up at the Battle of Thames up near Toronto. Tecumseh was killed on the battlefield. Simon Kenton at the age of 57 was a scout and a militia leader for the Patriots. When Tecumseh was killed, the two respected each other, they asked Kenton to go out and identify Tecumseh. Well, he went out and Tecumseh had taken off all of his chief stuff, so he looked like a regular warrior except he was big and, you know, Kenton looked at the battlefield and he spotted Tecumseh and then he spotted Chief Round Chief over here with Chief Starbond and he said, okay, man, there is Tecumseh. And so the people mutilated the bodies around the other Indian and Tecumseh was not mutilated. So Tecumseh and Kenton both stood up for treating the enemy right. You don't mutilate dead people. You don't humiliate your captains. And that night, the Chawney came in, removed Tecumseh from the battlefield and gave him a decent burial and nobody knows where today. Okay, it's gonna move real quick now. So we've gone through Boone, Crockett, Kenton and Kenton and Boone were the real contemporary frontiersmen to Allen. So in Tennessee, what was there? There wasn't any one person, but if we go to James Robertson next slide, this is a looking young man. He's only born in 1742. So he's only four years younger than Ethan Allen and he was born in Virginia, moved to North Carolina. So he fits the definition of frontiersmen. He had limited education, but he was great at tracking and hunting animals, what you expect of a frontierman. And his claim to fame, well, he was on the third trip with Boone into Kentucky. So he was part of that frontiersmen attitude. His claim to fame next slide is that he helped found Nashville, Tennessee. In 1799, he led 100 men overland from Knoxville, 100 miles due west to the site of Nashville and built Fort Nash Borough. That took a while. There was 100 miles over land, pretty much flat land. It was too tough a trip for women and children. So what'd they do? They put the women and children on boats in January. And rafts, and they got stuck in the ice for two months. Now this is the Tennessee River. And if you imagine, Tennessee is a long, thin state, 400 miles up to the top, 350 on the bottom. Memphis, north, south on the river. And over in the east, you've got Knoxville coming down on an angle to Chattanooga, right? It's about 100 miles to Chattanooga and another 100 miles up to Nashville at the triangle. 120 by 100, 100, all right? The Tennessee River goes down to Chattanooga across Alabama Muscle Shoals to Tupelo, Mississippi. Then it goes up north through Tennessee, through Kentucky and dumps into the Ohio River above the Dupa. There, the river is coming down to the Mississippi, the Ohio, right? So they've got to pull or sail, you can't paddle upstream, up the Ohio River about 50 miles to get to the mouth of the Cumberland River, which goes to Nashville. Well, then it's like 150 miles upstream there. So a year and a quarter later, the women show up, some of them. And there was no telegraph, no telephone, no communication. I don't know if the men ever expected them to show up, but they got stuck in the ice for two months. They got attacked by Indians. They got smallpox and it took a year and a quarter. But remember, 120 miles across flat land was too tough for the women. So that's his claim to fame, the next photo, the next photo actually shows the guy who was with the women and was Don Donaldson. If you're in Nashville, Donaldsonville is Donaldson, is a Northwest or Northeast of Columbia, or national. So that's the real, that's, I'm gonna mention one other, that's the real frontiersman in the group, but he didn't do anything spectacular enough to be well known enough to compete with Boone or Ethan Allen or even Simon Kenton. That was his one claim to fame. Then the last guy I wanna mention from Tennessee is Jack Sevier or John Sevier, and he's up here next. He was more of a military man, more of a Tom Chittenden type. He was born in 45, so he's still in the right age group. And he was a frontiersman in that he was born in Virginia and moved to East Tennessee. So he moved, he went in, but he spent a lot of time in the military, not really on the frontier, that the support group when you're in the military. And he was involved with things like Cherokee Lord Dunman's War and the American Revolution. He served in the American Revolution. And then after the war in 1784, the settlers there revolted against North Carolina. Again, it was not a state yet. So Tennessee, the Western part of Tennessee, North Carolina was what became Tennessee. He led a revolt and created a separate state of Franklin. Like Vermont created a republic, right? It lasted for 17 years. So down there, they created a state that collapsed after six years, after four years. And this guy was the first governor. The only governor of the state of Franklin. And people got so mad at him, he fled after four years. Well, in 1790, when the state of Franklin was totally dissolved, North Carolina gave to the federal government the land of Tennessee, un-appropriated. And this guy led the settlement of Tennessee and became the first governor of Tennessee for 12 out of the first 14 years. 1796, he became governor. And for 12 out of the next 14 years, he served as governor before going into Congress and he served in Congress about five years and then died. So every state was a little bit different. And so this was a big guy, but nobody really cares about him. Today, there's a town in East Tennessee named Severeville. And that's known as the birthplace of Dolly Parton. So I mean, that's the best he could do. So I think with that, let me kind of conclude by saying again, my theme is to say that Ethan Allen could hold his own with Daniel Boone, Crockett, Simon Kenton. They were all different. They all were into new country making decisions and what they did. If they didn't do it, when would they have come to states? The statehood was in part dependent upon the frontiersmen to go and clear the land and establish communities where there weren't any. And I think we should do more to promote Ethan Allen in the same light that Boone, Crockett, and in Ohio, Kenton gets a lot of recognition. So I would take the questions at this point. Crammed a lot in. So feel free if you are here in the room with us. So obviously you can ask a question around. If you wanna ask a question and you're watching on Zoom, please make sure you unmute yourself and we would certainly like to hear from you. We'll start with the question right here in the tab. You're from Bennington. Yes. Ethan Allen, is that tabber still? What would be the question? Cram and Bennington were Ethan Allen sat there and saw us attack in Fort Spectrum. Right. The question is in Bennington, there was a famous tavern which was at headquarters for the Green Mountain Boys and that tavern is what's called the Catamount Tavern or Bayes Tavern, different things. Green Mountain Tavern. The question is it still there? No, there's a marker. There's a house set back off the foundation. But that indeed is a very, very well-known place in Bennington. Not only was it the headquarters for the Green Mountain Boys and as you mentioned, it's where the Green Mountain Boys or Ethan Allen plan, the attack on Fort Ticonderoga. Oh, I missed a story about that. The first victory, true. It was actually, it got Ethan Allen into a little bit of trouble talking about it in trouble because the first Continental Congress met in 74 and adjourned in November, I guess it was. The last thing they did is said, well, things are a little bit rough, but don't anybody attack the British? Well, you fast forward in spring of 75, you had conquered in Lexington, the things changed a little bit. Ethan Allen wasn't the only one thinking about it. Massachusetts and Connecticut legislators and governors were thinking about it. Benedict Arnold was authorized by the Massachusetts to lead a group, but Ethan Allen is the one who actually did it and that was the first victory. After the victory, Allen got a very nasty letter from Second Continental Congress, which met on the same day, May 10th was the first day of Second Continental Congress, the same day that they stormed Fort Ticonderoga. You got a nasty letter from Congress saying, what'd you do, be prepared to give it all back. He went down with Seth Warner to Philadelphia to the Capitol, arrived in June, and a couple of things that happened in the meantime. Battle of Bunker Hill and George Washington was named the commander in chief of an army that didn't exist. And so by the time he got down there to tell the story, Congress's attitude had actually changed. The story I meant to miss was, see, Crockett, you can wonder about his military judgment of going to the Alamo. Well, I think circumstances, you couldn't always predict the circumstances. It changed, they were a huge outnumber. Did he really believe that he would become a hero, save the Alamo? I don't know, became obvious he couldn't. Did he really think he was gonna come back or bring his family to Texas? I don't know. I'd ask the same question of Ethan Allen when he made the military misjudgment of attacking or getting ready to attack Montreal after Ticonderoma. General Montgomery was headed up there, the Northern Army of the Continental Forces headed up, and he employed Allen to be a scout, go scout and recruit men to fight on our side. So he recruited like 200 people, Canadians, but Montgomery got stuck at Fort John on the River and 200 Canadians must have been wondering, are you kidding me? Is anybody coming? Is this really gonna, how long can you hold 200 people off their homeland as a group waiting to attack? Besides that, and this is a lot of, I think mystery unknown or hard, he may have expected 200 other men from John Brown to participate and he may have expected 500 men from inside Montreal that would give him a total about 900 or 1,000 people to attack Montreal which was only defended by 100 people. That's 10 times as many people as he had working for him at Fort Ticonderoma, defended by only two times as much. So the numbers arguably, if they were right, were on his side. So was it foolishness or were some of that misinformation? Was the circumstances change? He ended up being captured with 30, same number as Daniel Boone got captured by the Indians at the Lick. Now again, the parallels are amazing. So when the people got wind of the fact that Ethan Allen was there with, and they came out of Montreal and the Canadians disappeared very quickly. It left Ethan Allen standing with 34 men on the bank of a river that they weren't gonna cross and they were captured. So again, another parallel question, was it military misjudgment or did circumstances change? I won't answer that. Okay, another question? I'll ask you one. Growing up, I think we knew or heard and admired David Crockett more than any of the other people you mentioned. I'm wondering if part of that was due to the fact that Crockett's the only one who died in battle of the six that you mentioned. You were also, was it Walt Disney? Boone lived until 1920, and, huh? Hollywood. Hollywood, the quick answer to the question is yeah, absolutely, it was Walt Disney and made Crockett very famous with that ditty. And when we were all young, we had coon skin caps and rifles and we were Crockett-type then. And a lot of that, it wasn't totally Disney in 1831, there was a biography of Crockett that went overboard with the legend and exaggerated. And, but that's what happens with heroes. Sometimes the stories stretch and sometimes they go beyond reality. And that's okay, but we ought to look at the people as real people with faults and then figure out what did they do and where will they be without them? Allen arguably was very, very critical in the entire development of Vermont, even though he was active only from like, let's say 1770 when he defended the Hampshire grants with the ejectment trials up till what he died in like 1789 was it? So that's 17 years and he was not the big kingpin of the Republic. Thomas Chittenden was really the boss, but he was there. And I don't think you can underestimate the control that he brought to the 1770, 1775 period until the attack on Fort Ticonderoga. Up until then the Green Mountain boys set the tone and I'd say Ethan Allen prevented it from escalating to bloodshed. He had a way of scaring people off and somebody said, the sheriff was scared to the death of him. Well, wait a minute. If the sheriff isn't scared to the death of him, it ain't gonna be effective. To be a really good bully, you have to be convincing. It might have been criticized but it didn't take so much effort. It didn't take so much effort. Right, the point, and we're probably at the end, but the final point raised here or a good point another important part of Fort Ticonderoga was the capturing of the cannon, which was part of the planning going in, but it was General Knox who took those. Wasn't it General? He was what? Bookseller, he lost. Oh, Bookseller, okay. At that point he was not a general. Knoxville Tennessee's attack was at Fort Ticonderoga. Right, right, right. But he's the one that took the cannon from Ticonderoga, took it down somewhere along, like where- In the middle of the winter, the oxen- Yeah, in the middle of the winter, on oxen across the Berkshires, amazing. And when they delivered those cannon onto Dorchester Heights, Washington was there, perimeter was covered. They were looking down on Boston and that's when the Redcoats evacuated Boston. Thank you for changing the amount of loss. Yeah, and in Boston today, evacuation day is still celebrated, probably the only place it is, but that was because of Fort Ticonderoga. Don't forget. All right, thank you, Donald. I think we're not gonna take a vote as to who is our favorite frontiersman, but I would put in a plug for Ethan Allen in terms of his writings. I don't believe these other five people wrote anything as interesting as Ethan's narrative or his reason, the only oracle of man. So if you haven't read those, I would encourage you to do that. We do have them commercial, commercial. We do have them here at Ethan at Homestead for sale. So thank you for joining us. For those of you that are live, this is being recorded and other folks will be able to watch this program at a future time. We are still planning our talk for next month. We have a couple of people who are in line and we are just gonna finalize the dates with those. But again, it will be the third Sunday of the month in June. If you are not a member of Ethan Allen Homestead, I would suggest you consider joining us. Go on to the website and all the information there on how you can become a member of the Ethan Allen Homestead. So thank you for joining us and thank you, Don, for, Don came all the way up from Bennington to be with us today. So, and his wife. So we appreciate their visit with us today. So take care, folks. Goodbye.