 Hello everyone. Thank you for attending the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum's Virtual Third Sunday Lecture Series. We would like to begin by thanking you for your constant support for our programming. If you would like to make a contribution to the museum to support us through the pandemic or help us bring more programs online, please go to the description box below to find a link where you can donate online securely. Before we get to today's talk, I would like to thank the sponsors that have made this lecture possible. They are Burlington Cars, 802 Cars, and People's United Bank. These businesses have made a vital investment in their community to ensure that we can still continue bringing you these presentations at no charge. Today's lecture presents a critical analysis of the ejectment trials that were at the heart of the dispute between New York and the New Hampshire Grantsmen and Ethan Allen's role in it. Today's presenter is Gary Shattuck, the co-author of Revolentory, Ethan Allen, Philip Skaen, and the Dawn of Vermont. Gary G. Shattuck is a New Hampshire native who served in the Vermont law enforcement community for over three decades. He received his BA from the University of Colorado, a Juris Doctor degree from the Vermont Law School, and a Master's degree in military history concentrating on the Revolutionary War and attended postgraduate courses in archaeology and heritage at the University of Leicester in the UK. He served for many years as a patrol commander with the Vermont State Police and Assistant Attorney General for the State of Vermont, prosecuting Vermont Drug Task Force cases. Gary went on to become an assistant United States Attorney with the US Department of Justice, where, in addition to prosecuting criminal offenses and acting as the district of Vermont's anti-terrorism coordinator and arguing cases before the US Court of Appeals in the Second Circuit, he also worked as a legal advisor in Kosovo and Iraq. Since leaving government service, he has written six books and many articles on early Vermont history. Gary is also on the Board of Trustees of the Vermont Historical Society and the Vermont Historical Records Advisory Board, and is a member of the University of Vermont Center for Research on Vermont and the Fort Ticonderoga National Council. Please welcome Gary Shattuck. Thank you, Dan. And thank you to the Ethan Allen Homestead for this opportunity to come and talk to you about our recent book, The Rebel Inventory, Ethan Allen, Philip Skeen, and the Dawn of Vermont, that was written by myself and Nick Muller based upon information or a question that was posed by Nick's good friend John Duffy, who recently is deceased. I'm going to pull up my PowerPoint here. People that are familiar with Ethan Allen will remember that Duffy and Muller wrote inventing Ethan Allen a few years ago and based upon their continuing relationship between these two gentlemen. John happened to ask Nick one day a question of whether or not a certain attorney from New Haven, Connecticut, appeared during the important ejectment trials of 1770 and 1771 that involved Ethan Allen. This prompted Nick and during to ask his own question of why didn't people look at Philip Skeen at the same time in any interaction he might have had with any of these people. And it was these two questions, what role did this attorney play, what effect did he, that Philip Skeen have in the in the New Hampshire grants that prompted the research involving the Rebel Inventory. I have been previously working on in legal issues involving things taking place in the grants, looking at court records in the Vermont State Archives. And when Nick and John started to ask their questions, they were directed into the New York Supreme Court records and that happened to be in New York City at the time. And because I knew them, they asked me if I would take a look at the records and it was based upon that. And then further research into Philip Skeen that this whole story took off on in a whole different new track that none of us could have ever anticipated. What we ended up doing is showing a number of relationships, the context, the continuity of things that happened in the New Hampshire grants in the pre-revolutionary war years that have really not been talked about to put a lot of things into perspective. The emphasis on this is happens to be the law, essentially. And we're going to look at land ownership and the effects of the law and how it affected the behavior of people like Ethan Allen and Philip Skeen and how it brought about the beginnings of things like the Green Mountain Boys. Unfortunately, over the years, there's been significant misinformation, mischaracterization, misinterpretation about these legal proceedings of 1770 and 71, which prompted things like the creation of the Green Mountain Boys. And this misperception and mischaracterization has been going on for well over 200 years now. During this time, only two other attorneys looked at this time. The 1770s, that involved Highland Hall, the former governor of Vermont in 1868 and his history of Vermont, and Matt Bushnell-Jones and his Vermont in the making in 1939. Highland Hall was in the 1868. So between these two attorneys, nobody really looked at it. Unfortunately, and we too, we explained it in the book, Highland Hall had a bit of a prejudicial take on it, and Matt Jones had more of a realistic take on it. And it was just a very interesting thing for me as an attorney to now come in and look at these things from a whole different perspective because neither of these men looked at the primary sources. None of them looked at the court documents per se, of which there actually were many. And based on the research that I undertook for a period of time, it's been involved going to many institutions, the New York State Archives, the Vermont State Archives to gather up all of this. And so what you have to do is try and remove any preconceptions that you have of what happened, set aside things like the statements of Ethan Allen, how bad the orakers were, and go back and look at the actual documents that were a part of the record and see how they were misinterpreted over the years. I think if you listen to the words of the state participants, it'll a lot of things will come into a proper perspective. Now this story involving of the dawn of Vermont involves also an attempt to create a new colony. And anyone that's a student of Vermont would recognize, maybe not this map, but in general on the right-hand side of the Connecticut River and then off to the left, Lake Champlain on the upper left. This is a map prepared in 1771 by Simon Metcalf. This is between the two sets of trials that took place in 1770 and 71. And what we're talking about in a potential new colony was to extend from the Connecticut River across what became known as the New Hampshire Grants and extend west all the way to Lake Ontario and then north to the Canadian border. And we have to remember there was three phases to this colony project. Between 1759 and 1763 during the Seven Years War, a barrier colony was to be set up to protect the lower colonies from invasions from Quebec. The second phase took place between 1769 and 71 during the course of the famous Brackenridge confrontation at his farm in Bennington and the ejectment trials. And then immediately after the trials the rebirth of this colony project. Now what we're talking about here is land interest. And I don't care if it's a settler, a proprietor, a New York patent holder, no matter who we're talking about here, or a military officer trying to get land, what we're looking at in all of these cases is title. And don't forget that title is the driving interest here. And it changes with the legal cultures that we look at. New York was separate from New England. New England had a long history of dealing with property transfers in a fee simple manner where a person owned property wholly on their own. It also had a tradition of primogeniture where the eldest son received the major benefit of a demise from a dying parent on the other side of the coin on the New York side. We had a long history of dealing with patents issued to people seeking large amounts of land who would in turn lease the land to people, other people. And so this thing evolved from a settler, proprietor confrontation involving against the against the landlords that in fact needed tenants. And let's keep this in mind. There was really, as we look at this, no intention to actually eject settlers from the land. I'll qualify this as we go along. Because the patent holders, the landlords needed people on the grants in order to improve the land to comply with crown policy to exploit the natural resources of the North American continent. This contest between the settlers and the proprietors also present a very interesting situation that arose right at this time that has not been discussed in the literature. This is necessary in order to understand why Ethan Allen went and did what he did. It was the fact that we were dealing with law versus equity. And we don't need to get into the particulars of it. But in a legal court, there is a determination in a, after a trial, pursuant to a finding by a jury, as to whether or not somebody had a title. In another alternative, in this case, border commissions that were available to deal with New York border problems, those could be handled on an equitable basis. Which involves people contesting their right to ownership along the border. Why didn't that happen in the New Hampshire grants? We'll talk about that. There were huge consequences as a result of these famously Jackman trials of 1770 and 71. There was number one, the validity of the titles that Benning Wentworth issued pre 1764. Right after the time of the Seven Years War ended, Wentworth stopped his land granting. So we're talking about his granting period in the 50s up to the end of the French and Indian War. The second thing had to do with the famous Crown decision of July 2017-64 that determined that the New York border was at the Connecticut River. Now, as you look at what was going on here, there was only a single person who transcended these three phases. And that was Philip Schene, who was a captain in the British army. In 1769, he resigned his commission and went to work in a civil capacity in New York. We'll talk about that. He became a New York judge, a militia commander, also a very good friend of Ethan Allen's. This starts in 1759 with this colony project instigated by Jeffrey Amherst on the left, aided by Philip Schene in the center, one of his captains, and John Small, also a captain of Amherst on the far right. People will recognize the name John Small because he was a famous plaintiff in one of the ejectment trials. This started in July of 1759 when Amherst and these men took Crown Point and sent the French headed up the lake to Quebec where they were later defeated. Small on the far right was responsible for the security of the men that were building the Crown Point Road between Crown Point and Charlestown, Fort Number Four. Small was involved in that, appointed by Amherst to take care of it. And at the same time, Schene was appointed as the person to take care of Crown Point. All of these men were closely together. And an idea Schene of Amherst, excuse me, came up with the idea of creating this barrier colony to stretch from the Connecticut River to Lake Ontario. But he did it in a military context without consulting with New York authorities when it ended up posing quite a problem. In November of 1759, these are things that I don't think people have ever seen before. These come from the British archives. In 1759 in November, Schene applied for land on the south side of Lake Champlain. And we see his application on the far left here. It's written November 10, Crown Point Camp. On the very same, excuse me, on the very same day to the right, we see a petition that was created by six colonial commanders from the various colonies that worked alongside Schene. You see a British officer on the left. You see colonial officers on the right. The ones on the right are petitioning for land along the Crown Point Road, which was called, interestingly, the New Cut Road. And so this is the beginning of the barrier. This is going to be the frontier that these men are going to create and bring in settlers. Schene eventually obtained some land. He received permission from Ann Hearst without formal grants of land to begin developing the south side of Lake Champlain in the wetlands that became known as Schene'sboro in our current day Whitehall. And he began to bring in settlers. As far as these six colonial colonels, the subject of the petition in the middle, they did not receive... Worked his way through the process as we talked through what happened here. They did not actually receive the grants per se, but some did receive other grants. In 1762, Wentworth was tiring of Ann Hearst. Wentworth was demanding too much of the New Hampshire government to supply men and supplies. So Wentworth was tired of it. He began to fear. We suspect he began to fear how this new colony was going to intrude on his interest. And he sent people in 1762 to confront the military at Crown Point, telling them that New Hampshire extended all the way to the west side of Lake Champlain. He sent surveyors that year to Hunion River to begin staking it out. He made a lot of grants at that time. Schene and Snall at the same time were sent south to Havana, where the two worked in the Caribbean theater until the close of the war in 1763, after which they returned. Now in July of 1764, as this dispute between Wentworth and New Yorkers going on over who owns this land between the Connecticut and the Hudson River, but incidentally the essentially the colonial plan dies with the end of the war. There's no need for it. So we transitioned from a military perspective to a civil perspective. And in July of 1764, the Crown did some extraordinary things. And any student of these times knows full well that the that it ruled that the New York's border extended to the Connecticut River. What has not been described for over 200 years that on the very same day, the Crown made a provision that allowed New York to resolve its border dispute with New Jersey by creating a border commission. We have two different ways of resolving border problems issued on the same day. We have one that involves equity, what is the fairness of what's going on as provided through a border commission that doesn't require the hard application of law. And at the same time, we now have, because of Wentworth's actions, a decision by Fiat from the Crown that the border goes to the Connecticut River. Also on the same day, the council dismissed over a dozen of Wentworth's laws in New Hampshire. So clearly, this was a retaliatory action against Wentworth for what he had been doing at the time. So keep in mind, here we are dealing with two ways to resolve border problems, disputes, one through equity and involving notions of fairness, the other through the application of law in which equity does not intrude. In 1765, the stamp act takes place. And then we're all aware of the contortions that a number of the colonies went through for that. Scheme goes on to develop Schemesboro, which is in the upper left-hand corner of this map. And so this is kind of what we call, in the book, the area of intrigue on the left side. Schemesboro on the upper left, and then Bennington down at the very bottom. And if you look at the map on the right, you'll see a closeup of that Bennington area. And so Scheme is developing the area up in Schemesboro. He becomes a judge. He becomes a New York militia commander in 1769 with authority between that point and the Canadian border. So he has an immense amount of power under the New York colony. Earlier, John Small, who we saw the picture of, receives a grant in Bennington. And we see that on the map on the right-hand side, just above the word Volonshok. That's the Volonshok patent. You'll see John Small's name. You'll also see another name immediately just below the word Bennington, Michael Schlatter. And these two names become important when we talk about the Ejectment trials. It's also interesting to note that a large number of Gages, Thomas Gages, command staff also receive land grants in the grants. And then also Benedict Arnold, like the area so much, he was considering getting a grant of land in the vicinity of Schemesboro. Now in 1769 also, we have a problem in the New York government in the collection of taxes. And this is what is going to drive the Ejectment trials. So remove from your mind the thought that the patent holders wanted to eject settlers. That's just a misnomer. Ejectment is a name for the proceeding. So New York has a problem going on in 1769 and collecting the quit grants, the yearly quit grants, from the various patents, a form of land tax. So this is an internal issue to the colony of New York, not to any other colony, just in New York. It's not aimed in any neighboring colonies. And what the New York colony decided to do was to partition these non-paying patents, which would have included a long shot patent. And therefore it threatened the validity of the landlord's titles. It threatened their titles. So we have a self-preservation move going on by the land, by the patent holders, the New York patent holders, the infamous landlords, the Yorkers as they wanted to call them, who had no intention of evicting the wanted to protect their titles. Again, we don't have a border commission going on here. We have Ejectment proceedings taking place in a court of law, which then forced the patent holders to get ahold of attorneys, which included James DeWayne and a John Tabor camp. What's also interesting is, as bad as Ejectment law was attacked by Ethan Allen and so many others, after Vermont split off and became an essentially independent region prior to its becoming a state, it adopted that law. It enforced Ejectment law. Again, it was in order to deal with titles. Now there were only three witnesses to the Ejectment trials we're going to be talking about. In 1771, John Tabor Kep wrote a letter, a report to Governor John Dunmore, who the governor of New York, which essentially remained hidden in the British archives. Investment transcribed and included in our book. In 1773, James DeWayne wrote a narrative of the proceedings, which has been largely ignored. In response to what DeWayne wrote about what took place during these trials, Ethan Allen wrote a brief narrative in 1774. And this is what has been cited by the historians. Because in this, Allen disparaged the Yorkers, he disparaged their dress. He said that they had no right to appeals. And he said that the actual legal proceedings were, quote, too tedious to particularize. Those are his words. He danced over them. But if you look at the primary sources that we're going to look at here, you can't dance over them because they answer so many questions as to what was happening. And as we look at these, remember that there are two things going on. There is surveying of the nonpaying part of patents prior to partitioning them. And second of all, there were suits brought on behalf of the landlords to protect the titles. Again, let's keep this separate from retaliation, if you will, by Yorkers against settlers, because that's not the case. Now, the issue of due process, I'm not going to get through all the law of what Ejectment Law was, title law. But I studied a number of these cases. They are all consistent. They're all consistent with notions of due process in the 18th century. And we see all of these things that I list here taking place during the course of the Ejectment trials, from the service of papers to the plaintiff having to prove the four elements. Those are italics to what the attorneys did when they entered, their appearance to represent the settlers, to the jury selection process, subpoenas, the trial process that took place. All of these things would be familiar to anybody in the 21st century. None of this is strange. The right to appeal. And then finally, if need be, a writ of Ejectment issued no later than a year after the trial that was executed by a sheriff. Now, in order to show you how closely dewaying and can't follow the laws they represented these landlords, again, we're not steamrolling over the settlers. We need to look at a number of the primary documents that were filed. And here we see Isaac Sawyer, who went on to the grants on October the 10th, 1769. And this is the first incident to take place prior to the first confrontation that James Brackenridge has formed. And on the 10th of October, what Sawyer is saying here is I served upon Eliacon Walton, Ejectment Papers. On the 14th, on the lower left, Sawyer goes over to Albany and he meets with an attorney, Peter Sylvester. He was a commissioner authorized to take affidavits on behalf of the Supreme Court. On the 14th of October, Sawyer files this notice with Sylvester saying, I serve these papers upon a number of people. This is only one of many that went on. On that same day, October 14th, 1769, the surveyors meeting to partition the patents over in the air in the wall, particularly the wall arms patent, leave Albany and head over to the patent. They show up and it panics the settlers. And this I found terribly fascinating. This is from the National Archives. It leads on October 18th, the settlers to alarm settlers who have received these notices that Isaac talked about, to write to Walton from Isaac Sawyer, to write to John Wentworth. And they're petitioning Wentworth asking for assistance saying that we have received a number of these notices of suit. We've been told we need to respond to them. We don't know what to do. We need your assistance. And then this is just wonderful. If you notice that the petition is only two pages, but the remaining pages that you see listed here in double columns lists all of the people that were alarmed by what they saw. And we see all of the names of James Brackenridge and all of the people that received notices from Sawyer to respond to the fact that they've been issued papers to deal with the ejectment suits. And this shows how closely these people, all of these men were working with Sylvester, how they were fashioning their actions based upon what an attorney told them. They sent Samuel Robinson over to Albany right after the surveyors showed up. And these are, this is a snippet from the documentary history of New York. And we know that on the 19th, Samuel Robinson returned from Albany with advice from Mr. Sylvester, the king attorney and another, another gentleman of note which Brackenridge and Robinson desired them to speak to. What did Sylvester tell them? Well, we know that on the 24th, the town fathers from a number of towns, and we see that down on the bottom piece of paper here, also sent a second petition to John Wentworth, asking for assistance. And they say here, and I pulled a snippet of it, that it was Sylvester's opinion, quote, by the advice of the attorneys of that government, meaning the New York government, we are not properly under their jurisdiction. So the Brackenridge matter went preceded based upon legal advice from an attorney. And what we see down here, when the town fathers from Bennington, from Powell, from Manchester, from Arlington, from Shasta, when they all signed their own petition, we see the name Jaheel Hawley. Just remember that name, we'll talk about that. The men massed with all those names, you saw that there were quite a few men, they massed and convinced the settlers to leave. And I'm sorry, the surveyors to leave, and they did. When I saw this document in the New York State Archives, it was just, it was explosive. This is from the Supreme Court of Judicature's docket book from October of 1769. And on October 21, which is sufficient time for a writer or someone going down a boat getting from Albany to New York City to notify the attorneys in New York that they had already served the papers up in Albany. And based upon the civil procedure process that happened, the attorneys went ahead and filed their papers. And it was this document, these are two pages, you flip it over, and I'm not providing that here. But over on the right hand side, and then continuing on to the next page, are all the people that I serve with, with the notices of ejectment against them. This is extraordinary, because all of history has said that there were only roughly six suits that were filed. No, there were 18, I'm sorry, 19 suits in total, involving 18 defendants. This was a huge deal. The suits that they filed, these are called Nisy Prius, Latin Nisy Prius. These are trial court records. These things were rolled up on, or they were filled out on the right hand side, which you're seeing is the famous case of small versus carpenter, which might arguably be a Vermont's birth certificate, if you will. These were several feet long, and they're filled out by the attorneys as to what happens during a court procedure, and they were rolled up into scrolls. And that's how the New York Archivist kept them until a few years ago. And they went and unrolled those scrolls, and on the left hand side, here you see stacks of them. And this is just one grouping of them. There are many of them. And these documents outline what happened in all of these different kinds of cases. Now, this is another extraordinary thing that shows up. This is from the New York Supreme Court of Judicature's writ book on regarding the papers kept by James DeWayne, one of the attorneys. And if you look at the top here, you'll see that in May of 1770, this is six months after the filing of the charges and the incident at Brackenrich's farm. If you look there, you see it was William and Robert Bayard, B-A-Y-A-R-D, versus Robert R. Livingston. Remember that name? He was the judge of the judgment trials, one of two. Look at the next line. The same type of case versus Michael Schlater. I'm sorry. It's a case involving Michael Schlater versus Josiah Fuller. I talk about the use of these Latin terms and how there were fictitious names involved. I don't want to take the time to do it here. But it's in the book. And it seems complicated here, but it makes sense in the book. We see also following down there the name of John Small versus Isaiah Carpenter. Then we see George Clark versus James Brackenrich. And we see on June 6, as the trial is getting ready, Peter quiet. Ignore the Peter quiet. I explain why that's a fictitious name. It's nothing to get concerned about. Versus Carpenter, the next line, Fuller. And look at the third one. The honorable Robert R. Livingston. James Brackenrich. This has never been shown before. We have a Supreme Court judge who's listed as a defendant in an ejection trial alongside the settlers. And we'll talk about that. This just to give you an idea how difficult it is to weigh through these papers. This is the Livingston lawsuit that was filed against him. And it was filed and prepared by none other than James, who appeared representing the landlords during the ejection trial. So this is the quality of the papers that I'm trying to pull together this story. Now the people we're talking about here are Robert Livingston. Robert, our Livingston in the upper left. George Duncan Ludlow. The third and fourth justices of the Supreme Court of Judicature. On the lower left, we see John Tabor Kemp. This is an image from the New York Historical Society purportedly of Kemp. It's not definite, but they believe that it is Kemp. James Dwayne, who we receive from the University of Vermont. And then Peter Sylvester, the Albany attorney that was consulting on the Brackenrich matter, who was assisted in the trials by an attorney from New Haven, Connecticut named Jared Ingersoll. This is the gentleman that John Duffy asked about when he was talking with Nick. Did Ingersoll appear? So the question that we have to ask based upon the representations made by Ethan Allen in 1774 about the bias, corruption, and what have you of these men excluding the defense attorneys, it doesn't hold up. Allen condemned the judges and the prosecutor or the plaintiff's attorneys. They weren't prosecuting, by the way. Kemp, even though he was attorney general, was appearing as a private attorney, not as the AG. These people had to had to appear in court wearing the types of gowns that were worn in England. And that included the defense attorneys, Sylvester and Ingersoll. The fact that any of these men might have owned land as being biased, it just doesn't stand up. Yes, they did own land. Yes, at times there were probably problems within the New York court system that were not entirely kosher. But to say that these men were corrupt and cutting corners and had decided the law against the settlers during the ejective trial just does not stand up. Now in May of 1770, Ethan Allen reportedly was hired by the proprietors of the grants to go to Portsmouth to get papers that could be introduced during the trials. Sylvester, who's the only colored picture here you see, Sylvester provided instructions to Allen and he told them that you needed to get exact full copies of these papers. They needed to be signed by authorized representatives of the New Hampshire government. They needed to bear the seals to show their authenticity. Now I or Allen, because Ethan never talked about the trials and we'll talk about that because Allen mishandled this grossly, not following Sylvester's instructions. I or Allen states in 1798 that Ethan went to Portsmouth or went to after leaving Portsmouth, went to New Haven, Connecticut, to hire Ingersoll on the on the lower right there. There is no absolutely no evidence at all that Ethan did this. Ingersoll was an admirable judge working recently assigned to work out of Philadelphia but who maintained residence in the practice in New Haven. I went through extensively through his records and showed no indication that he ever was retained by Ethan Allen. He was also a board of commissioner that went along with Benjamin Franklin based upon this crown order of July 1764 working on the on this border issue outside of a court process. He was also an attorney representing settlers who were being sued by proprietors from the Noble Town massacres 1766. I go into it in the block I won't do it here but what happened was settlers had suits filed against them and involved British troops, some of Gage's troops coming in there was a massacre that went on there and subsequently because of the problem the town agent for the town of Noble Town contacted Ingersoll in New Haven and asked him to participate in June 1770 on June 26 with the trials that were taking place in Noble Town and here this is a paper from New Haven from the Ingersoll papers. This is Kellogg writing to Ingersoll and April saying that please recall that I retained your services in the case of Colonel Rensselier and the proprietors of Weston North. I now want to inform you that the trial of those cases is notified to be in the next court in Albany which will be on Tuesday the 26th of June 1770 and though he says it's probable though not certain one of the cases will be tried and then he goes on to say that the people of Noble Town really want you to show up and please let us know if you're going to come. So we've got three amazing things happening on a single day on June 26 1770. We have the ejectment trials involving these number of settlers from the New Hampshire grants. We have the Supreme Court justice answering as a defendant in a separate ejectment trial. We have the defendants possibly showing up from Noble Town at which Ingersoll is supposed to represent them on. Now another thing that's never been talked about in the literature is the important use of juries. Juries played an important a very important role in a legal case and even though I said that equity concepts of equity of fairness were not directed by the judges or overseen by the judges, there was always a possibility that juries could nullify what it is they heard. If they didn't like the landlord and on a number of occasions they didn't and they ruled against the landlords, they would rule on behalf of the defendant settler. They were the conscience of the community but at the same time in order to receive the benefit of doubt from a jury, a defendant had to appear blame-worthy. It was you don't just come in and say that I was trampled on. You have to show that you were blame-worthy and you had not done anything to not to take you outside of receiving favorables, a favorable decision from a jury. We don't need to get into this but the purpose of this is to show you the extent that the preparation that was going on behind the ejectment trials. These are all papers that involve the jury in one way or another from a notice on the upper left-hand corner that John Tabor Kemp provided to Benjamin Cassane. He's a New York City attorney who represented the Bennington defendants. It's a notice from Kemp to Cassane to appear in the Supreme Court in New York to pick a jury. We have a notice from the clerk of the court below that directing these men to show up to pick a jury. We see in the very center the list of jurors that were chosen based upon what was called the struck jury system. And this is expensive, it took a lot of time, it took a lot of effort and the court did not allow this thing to take place lightly. It involved the clerk selecting the names of 48 people from the local communities and then the attorneys would come in and they could strike off 24 of them if they wanted to. The remaining 24 were summoned in the court. And so what you're seeing is two for a bordier at the time of trial. So what you're seeing in the center document are the 24 men that were summoned in from the area, towns surrounding the Albany, Coxsackie, Cateskill, Miscayoon, Mohawk Country. And in the very bottom here of this particular document, we see that Benjamin Cassane, the attorney for the defense, refused to participate. He did not strike any. He showed up, but he didn't exercise any right to strike jurors. And so when that happens, then the clerk goes in and strikes them. On the upper right, we see a subpoena, an example of a subpoena for a witness to appear. On the lower right, we see James DeWayne's accounting of all the money that was spent for them to put this trial on. And also there's an inclusion in their payment to a man for furnishing beverages to the jury. Now this, again, just can't state strongly enough the fear that was in Kemp's and DeWayne's mind that they were going to lose these cases. They had a number of plaintiffs and there was a possibility that landlords were going to, they were going to lose them because the juries didn't like landlords, which stemmed also from the fact that the Crown did not particularly care for landlords because they stood in the way of development. And they were fearful they were going to lose the title for their landlord. But at the same time, we had the recent, or we had the 1764 Crown decision that said that New York's authority went all the way to the border or all the way to the Connecticut River. And if they received an adverse decision from the jury, what was the impact that it would have on land ownership from that point forward involving a Crown decision? Would it overrule it? It's just the stakes were tremendously high. And what I'm showing here, this is what really adds a lot of humanity to the story. These are the notes kept by John Tabor Kemp and they're from the New York Historical Society. They've never been pulled out before. They were all stitched together and I was able to get the curator to un-stitch them so that they all could be laid out. And they're just amazing. They talk about the facts that they had to deal with. They talk about the law. They talked about how are you going to prove our case? This is Kemp and Duane because they're fearful that they're going to lose. They recognize their own weaknesses. Kemp writes in one point here, I wish we could give instances of acts of jurisdiction of New York. Meaning, how are we going to show New York had authority in the grants? And the answer is his own question where he says the grant of the loans that gives one. He goes on to address and anticipate the evidence that the settlers were going to produce. And he talks about the specific types of evidence and how they're going to seek to oppose it and convince the court not to allow the evidence to come in. They don't know what evidence the settlers are going to introduce. But this is just an amazing insight into the minds of these two attorneys and how they were dealing with terribly complex legal issues. Now, in June 26, the 1770, the trial start. This is Albany on the left-hand side. North is facing north on the right. You're looking west with a Hudson River down below. And people coming from the grants would cross by a ferry over into Albany. And then you see that second pier on the from the left. That is where the stop toys was. That's the Dutch state house, the city hall, which is on the right-hand side that you see here. And the trial took place on the second floor of that. The first trial to take place, because we have camps notes of what took place. And this is in addition to the other pages I showed you. There are many pages like this of all the trials. And we see Clark versus Breckenridge up on the upper left taking place on June 27. That happened not on the 26th, because on the 26th was a day that Judge Livingston came off the bench and sat down at the defendant's table to defend his ejectment suit, of which he as a defendant conceded. He lost. So the stories have not talked about that. Ethan Allen never talked about it. And we'll talk about further why Ethan Allen didn't want to discuss these cases. Now we come to the famous case of small versus carpenter, which happens after Breckenridge. Allen said that Breckenridge followed all these cases and that he only conceded his case. Because these others went so badly that that's not the case. Breckenridge lost his case because he was within 20 miles on the west of the 20-mile line and was clearly in New York. We explain the jurisdictional issues in the book I will bore you here. But you see that there were a few jurors selected in Breckenridge's case. But that case ended very quickly because he had to concede a loss. But then we look at Isaiah Carpenter and we see here this took place on the 28th and we see the names of the 12 jurors that Kemp has listed. And then he lists the course of evidence. Mr. DeWaynes opened for the court and then how he reads Captain Small's patent to the jury. Archibald Campbell takes the stand. He's a surveyor. He talks about how he surveyed this land. Ebenezer Cole is a witness who talked to Carpenter. I'll talk about him in a minute. And he gives evidence as to what Carpenter told him. And then here's the second page where we see Mr. Sylvester for the defendant followed by essential entries for Mr. DeWaynes. And then we see another entry for Sylvester and then Ingersoll. Sylvester, Ingersoll. These two men were there and Ingersoll did certainly appear to defend them. And they list the reasons, a number of things in opposition to the testimony that DeWaynes gave. When it came DeWaynes turn, I'm sorry, Sylvester's turn, to introduce documents. This is the famous, famous point that all historians point to. When it came, Sylvester's time to introduce proof that Carpenter owned this land, the small was contesting, DeWaynes stood up and he objected. And I've done some snippets of those documents I just showed you there. And DeWaynes said, the evidence is improper. It's not exemplified, meaning there's no sworn copy. They were partial and extracts only. They were not the types of information, or they were documents that did not bear the proper authenticity, authenticity, he's your way of saying, that Sylvester had given directions to Allen on, but then Sylvester stands up and he says, that the evidence is incorrect, is only to ignorance. That Ethan Allen, not using his name, that the evidence is incorrect, is only to ignorance. And Ethan Allen's in the courtroom listening to this along with settlers and proprietors. And one can only wonder how they felt about hearing that. We also know because DeWayne wrote of this account that Sylvester also explained further to the court that the reason these evidence was incorrect was because settlers, he doesn't name Ethan, but Aaron says it was Ethan. He says that he did not follow directions. Ethan Allen never, in any of his writings, never addressed any of this, never explained the directions he received from Sylvester, never explained why he brought back improper documents, never responded to DeWayne's account, never responded to Sylvester's statement that what he did was of ignorance. So those are some major factors I think when you consider Ethan Allen's actions in the following months. But we also know what brought this case to a conclusion was that John's, that Isaiah Carpenter told the witness, he writes here out here, Defendant, meaning Carpenter, confesses these lands are within Major Small's track. He admits that it's in Small's track. Clearly, it's the loser case for them. Jury verticals for Small. And then Sylvester steps in and he seeks what's called a bill of exceptions, asking the court to explain why it did not allow the introduction of these documents, which happened to be the town charter of Arlington. But the settlers, or I'm sorry, the landlords, don't take advantage of the many victories that they won on this day. They delayed for a period of time at the request of the settlers so they could try and get their act together and come to some kind of a resolution. In 1771, a year later, because there were so many people served with cases, they couldn't try them all in 1770. We see in June of 1771 more of the grants defendants back in court and we don't need to go through them all. This is just more of Kent's notes explaining all the jurors that are selected, all of the witnesses that were called, the testimony that they provided. And the interesting thing to a number of these is said that the jury, without leaving the bar, found on behalf of the plaintiff, meaning the case was so slam dunk that the jury, that they didn't have to go and confirm the back room sometimes. So after it became clear that they were going to lose in a legal context, the idea of a colony resurfaces. And this involved Ethan Allen, Philip Skeen, who again I mentioned is a judge over in New York and a militia commander and Skeen, this is a potential rendering of him, joining with William Gilliland, who is the founder of Williamsboro, New York, a large patent holder above Skeensboro. And between the two of them, these are the two most powerful men on the west side of Lake Champlain between Albany and the Canadian border. And they decide to work with Ethan to see what they can do about reviving this colony idea. The plan is to put Skeen in as lieutenant governor and then he would have his own counsel. He would be able to perhaps steer the proceedings to deal with these underlying title issues, which is what is continuing to drive all of this. Also at the same time, this is around 1772, after the trials. Ethan goes with his family members and they create the Union River Company. The Green Mountain Boys get founded in this time period. In 1773, Skeen, here on the left, works with Jihiel Hawley in Arlington. They work as middlemen to work with the settlers in the grants with New York authorities. Hawley and James Brackenridge fail to England to represent the conflicting take on what ought to happen. Hawley was in favor of New York, Brackenridge was in favor of New Hampshire government. Skeen goes to England also and there he communicates with the same people that Hawley and Brackenridge did, Lord Dartmouth in particular. He also consults with Gage, Tom's Gage, who's there just prior to getting deployed to respond to the intolerable acts. He communicates with them and he mentions this, I want to become the lieutenant governor of Crown Point in Ticonderoga and we don't see him saying he wants to create a new colony, but you read between the lines and other communications that went on. It's clear that they're trying to revive the colony concept, which will then remove this land from New York authority, take it away from New Hampshire and then they'll be able to go ahead and resolve this tidal issue. But before this gets too far in December of 1773, we have the Boston Tea Party. English politics is convulsed with how to deal with that. We have the intolerable acts in 74 and late, finally at the end of 1774, Skeen becomes appointed by the crown to become Lieutenant Governor of Crown Point in Ticonderoga. And this is from the British Archives, it's fascinating. This is the commission and assigned by Dartmouth on the upper right. It goes from the lower left to the upper right. That just happens to be the way they recorded the commission in the British Archives, but it places him in control of Crown Point and Ticonderoga and the lands around him. Skeen leaves England on his way back to North America. He sails on the charming Sally ship between January and April, although there are problems within the colonies, they don't know that Skeen, the people on the grants don't know that Skeen has been appointed Lieutenant Governor. Allen, Ethan Allen communicates with all of our wallcaught in Connecticut about his new government. Meetings take place in Willesboro, Manchester, and Westminster to begin considering what they're going to do with the creation of a new government. March 13, we have the Westminster Massacre in April. Lexington and Conker takes place. Things are happening so quickly and still, they haven't heard from Skeen, they don't know what's going on. Ethan takes the position along with everybody else in the grants, now is the time to annihilate the old coral with New York and swallow it up into coming general conflict. Ethan and Arnold take for Ticonderoga May 10 of 1775. They sacked Skeen's estate. They immediately go on the offense and place him as an enemy. While Arnold works on the lake, on Lake Champlain, Gilliland petitions the Continental Congress for Ethan Allen to receive a high rank and being in charge of the Green Mountain Boys. Other petitions are also formed. Ethan and Seth Warner, incidentally, Seth Warner was a defender in the ejection trials. Ethan Allen and Seth Warner traveled to Philadelphia to meet with the Continental Congress. When they do that, Robert Cochran, Ethan's henchman, they leave for Ticonderoga and they head to Fort Edward in an attempt to destroy the court at Fort Edward, the Charlotte County Court, which was stopped by colonial troops. In June of 1775, Skeen finally makes it to North America. He lands in Philadelphia where he's immediately arrested by members of the Continental Congress, placed under house arrest and allowed Allen to rule. There's a question that comes up because Ethan and Seth Warner happened to be in Philadelphia at the time. Did he meet? Did Skeen meet with Allen at the time? You don't know. Allen is captured late in 1775. He goes on to end his captivity. In early 1777, Skeen has released, has been released the preceding November and there's an Ethan's captivity account. He says he met with a high officer of the British Army. And the question is, could it have been Skeen, these two Skeeners who had been planning to do this new colony, did Skeen offer Ethan an opportunity to meet the king, to travel to England where Skeen was headed, to meet the king, to receive a high commission, to receive land in the grants? These are all things that Ethan says that he denied accepting. But one has to wonder whether or not it was Skeen who was there to make that offer. Skeen goes to London. He is appointed to become Burgoyne's commissioner of supplies. He returns back to the theater of operations in the Champlain Valley. He meets up with Burgoyne. He receives authority to administer a host to Loyola City because of the arch Tory. He's hated by the people in Skeen's world that he put in as settlers. He goes on to get captured as Saratoga along with Burgoyne and eventually goes home and never returns. And there are the obviously whole colony aspect drops out of them. But I submit to you that what we're seeing here with this creation of a new colony, how the grants, settlers played both sides, whether they were going to teasingly stay affiliated with the British, whether they were going to cooperate with the Continental Congress. They certainly were against anything having to do with New York. Two points. Title of the land drove all of these issues and the question was how to resolve them. Transitioning from a military barrier colony to civil lawsuits to the revival of a colony, intermingled with issues over Ethan Allen's ignorance in the accumulation of that evidence in cases that the settlers couldn't very well at one. And it constituted a loss of opportunity. Present a number of very interesting topics that have not been wholly addressed by historians. And I hope that those that take the time to read the story will find this of interest. Thank you for this time. It's been privilege to be able to go over this. And thank you. Thank you for viewing Gary Shaddock's thought provoking presentation on a critical period in Vermont's early history. If you would like to know more, three, two. Thank you for viewing Gary Shaddock's thought provoking presentation on a critical period in Vermont's early history. If you would like to know more, we have placed links in the description box below where you can purchase a copy of Rebel and Tory, Ethan Allen, Philip Skein and the Dawn of Vermont, as well as Gary's other books. For next month, the state of Vermont has declared September 23rd as Alexander Twilight Day. Alexander Twilight was the first black man to earn a college degree in the United States and the first African American to serve in a state legislature. We're excited to welcome Bob Hunt from the Old Stone House Museum to present on Alexander Twilight's life. We'll see you then.