 This is probably I think the 15th year of our third Sunday of the month lectures and I believe I've attended every one So because of the role I play here at the homestead, and it's just nice to see this Continuing and for having Tom with us today Some of you may have realized that Dan O'Neill our director has gone on to homeland security And now we have our new director Angie Grove We are very fortunate to have and Angie if you would like to come up and Introduce yourself and then introduce our speaker for today Testing testing can you hear yes? So hi everyone, thank you for coming This is my very first monthly lecture series live But I have been enjoying them via zoom even before I became the director But we're very excited to be back in person and thanks for joining us for this So I have the honor of introducing our guest speaker for today Tom Anderson Tom grew up in Essex Vermont and he first came to the homestead on the Windows key interval as an unsuspecting youth Back when this place was still a working family farm owned by the moral family Tom was an insurance salesman and in fact the insurance sales provider for the moral family and Through that relationship He was asked if he would like to move into a caretakers home on the property Which was located on the other side of what is now route 127 Tom lived here at the homestead for three years Back then the historic importance of this site and the little house city near the river was not well known to the general public Then along came Ralph Mading Hill a prominent Vermont historian and preservationist And Tom worked closely with Ralph until Ralph's unexpected passing in 1987 After which Tom worked effortlessly to see his friend's vision come to fruition It is not an overstatement to say that without Tom's tireless labors the Ethan Allen homestead museum would not be standing today So today we are lucky enough to take a step back in time with Tom as he presents The founding fathers of the homestead museum how Ethan Allen's home was rediscovered Tom welcome Thank you She did very well for her first introduction here She knows more about this than we do Well, it's an honor to be here and address you If I Get choked up. It's because I'm the last survivor of all of the people who worked on on this project They're all gone and so if I say anything. That's not true. Nobody can refute me because I Was asked to do this by Angie and I think John and So I've worked on this lecture for about two weeks on and off and It was difficult because I had to recall everything from memory I'd had an insurance office in South Broughington on Ethan Allen Drive of all names from My phone I forgot to shut it off No, it's in my pocket Farmer from s-extinction So anyway I had an office in South Broughington in the insurance business for 30 years and worked with lots of people and I sold my office last September and when I did obviously I had to move out and I had over 100 cases of files that I took home and Set up a second office at my home. Even though I was retiring I still had to go through all of the records to make sure all the tax records were eliminated from people's files and things like that I've been doing it for Since last September and I'm still doing it and I can't find all of the records and pictures that Would have helped us today, but at any rate here. We are and so for two weeks I have been Writing my memories is this too loud for you, you know and I compiled 20 handwritten pages and Then after reading it a couple of times. I said, you know, that's really not right. I started over again. So I Wound up with another 20 pages. So I'll do my best not to confuse you but to tell you the the real story as I see it Or it lived it Okay To start with This according to Angie this was supposed to be a A record of the founding fathers and to talk about the founding fathers as opposed to the homestead You can read about the homestead, but nobody knows the founding fathers like I do They were all Wonderful people Okay, you know a little about me. I'm not going to go into that anymore, but In order to talk to you about the founders the I'm kind of going to read and ad-lib because There's a lot of detail that I don't want to forget The the real the original founder as you know was Ralph nating Hill and Ralph was a native Vermonter born in Burlington on the hill and I'm not sure Whether he went to UVM or to Dartmouth my memory tells me that he went to Dartmouth, but I'm not sure of that I did check it on On Google and it doesn't mention where he went to school Ralph was a Became a famous author one of my favorite books that he wrote is the Wanooski the heartway of Vermont and again That book was part of a series commissioned by the US government called the rivers of America and a Famous author from each area of the country was commissioned to write a history of What they considered the most famous river in their area so in Vermont it was the Wanooski so I'm going to tell you later on about Nathan and so and the Ethan Allen furniture company, but because we're talking about the rivers Fellow by the name of Stuart Holbrook who was a native Vermonter eventually moved out west to Oregon I believe and He was selected by the US government to write a history of one of the famous rivers in the West Tell you a little bit more about Ralph Ralph was The editor of Vermont Life magazine when it was a treasure and successful for a number of years He was a trustee of the Shelburne Museum where he was a close friend of Electra Habermeyer webs and her husband Jay Watson web and Oh Good Here's the book that Stuart Holbrook wrote about Ethan and Since he handed me the book I tell you the other part of the story. I won't have to tell you later When The flood of 27 hit It wiped out the Ethan Allen factory in Beecher Falls, Vermont If you've never been to Beecher Falls It's hard to tell you how to get there because there's almost no roads that go there It's way up in the northeast corner of Vermont and you have to drive from here Probably take you four hours to drive up there very remote So as long as I'm on that subject, I'll tell you Nathan Ansel was born and raised in New York City He He grew up his brother-in-law owned a furniture store in New York and at one point right after Nate as he was called Graduated from college. He didn't have a job. He was an attorney, but no clients So the brother-in-law asked him if he would attend the store while he went on vacation so he agreed he did and because there was again no live business or anything else to do he stayed on at the store and He stayed there a long time and While he was running the store one day An agent from the so-called Resolution Trust, which was the agency that picked up after the depression and went around and Liquidated assets that the government had loaned money on So he walked into Nate's furniture store And said I'd like to sell you a furniture factory and so Nate said he I laughed at him and told him well, you can't sell me anything because I don't have any money and The agent laughed and he said well, you don't need any money He said well, well, what do I need? He said I just need you to go To beat your false Vermont and take over a furniture factory And the price is 25 000 and you can pay me Whenever you can as much as you want so he took a trip to beat your falls and discovered the the factory there that made hardwood furniture and Few years went by they did very well the the factory was improved and so on and then the flood of 1927 hit and it Came down through the valley features falls and it it didn't wipe out the factory But it flooded all of the machinery And it took all of their hardwood lumber that was stacked outside took it all down the river and It floated into the trees and and further down down the river so He he wasn't there of course when that happened, but shortly thereafter he drove his model T from New York City to beat your falls and he uh He met with the employees and he told him that the company was broke and they No longer had jobs so They recounted and said And Well, we'll stay and we can rebuild the factory. We'll clean it up and we'll Oil all the equipment and we'll go up and find as much lumber as we could and bring it back and so on and so so they did and uh and as a result of their doing that the the company stayed in business and I knew about this firsthand because years later in the 80s I had become Nate Nate Ansel Nathan Ansel became very famous. He was the the sort of the original founder of the east and allen The furniture company in new york. It wasn't called east and allen then But he said that in the early days when he went there He said there was no store where you could go in And a woman could walk around and furnish a house if you wanted to buy a table you had to go to a table store if you wanted to get Chairs you had to go to a chair store so he recognized that This was not a good thing for people to do And he put together the concept of having all the furniture in a house that A household would need to To set up business So that's what happened and as They progressed the company became successful But it still wasn't called the east and allen furniture company But he had made a number of trips to beacher's falls and checked on Of the employees and what they were making and so on well on one of his trips Just in 1936 He was going to be going to the world's fair and taking some furniture there so When he went to beacher's falls He stayed at the cold brook hotel in cold brook, new hampshire just on the connecticut river And he liked to play poker so On this last trip just before he was going to Take some furniture to the world's fair in chicago He was playing poker And steward whole brook and others Chided him about the name of the company because he had named the company the israel putnam furniture company and whole brook Chastised him and said who the hell ever heard of israel putnam He said if you want a successful name it ought to be ethan alan because everybody in Vermont in the surrounding states knows ethan alan so The next day after the poker game He went back to the factory and they had an in-house blacksmith who made up a A square plug and they got all the furniture together that had been stamped Israel putnam and they burned out the name of israel putnam and replaced it with the ethan alan furniture company So that's how it got its name and so um Then whole brook Following that continued to write his book on the history of ethan alan and If you read various book reviews about the books that have been written on alan it says that this is one of the better books I don't know all of them, but there have been a number and uh So that's how it got its name and uh And as the the years went by and uh Ralph mating hill was starting to Get involved with finding Ralph's house He heard that Nathan and sell Was might be interested in helping out So he called Nathan who came to barrington and and met with him and uh, not actually gave Ralph the first 125 thousand dollars towards the starting of of this project So, um, I'm off schedule. So let me uh go back a little bit um I was telling you about about Ralph and He was a a great fisherman and and he liked to fish and and he Used to come with his boat He lived on on the banks of Burlington and not many people know this but the house that he lived in was sort of up above the red rocks cliff and uh It was an old house kind of half log and half traditional built in the 1800s and it is the house that Electra webinar husband Watson spent their honeymoon in in Ralph's house And they looked across the bay and saw all the land on the point and that's when they Decided they would like to own that land and make a farm out of the whole thing So I've never seen that written anywhere, but Ralph told me that that uh, that's how they started and um, you You can read various accounts of that land because Obviously, it was the most beautiful piece of land along the lakefront there and because it goes back into the 1700s Uh, it's the first piece of property that was settled by the settlers I don't know just how many small farms there were that comprised the several thousand acres that they ended up owning but Uh, the web started buying Those farms up and took a quite a long time but they succeeded in in buying all those small farms and converting them into what we now know as the Shelburne farms, which I think consisted of I think it was about five thousand acres because it went from the just south of Shelburne point And it went all the way down through Shalak and took in several miles of of lakefront So anyway Ralph was was friendly with mrs. Webb because he was advising her on on the items that shiata Include in her or museum to be and Ralph loved boats and He was familiar with the ticonderoga boat And he ended up buying the ticonderoga and Ralph operated it for two years And he told me that he discovered that he couldn't afford operated anymore because couldn't find people to shovel the coal and uh, so he talked mrs. Webb into buying the the ticonderoga and Moving it up onto the site that would become the Shelburne museum and As a youngster, I was around I I saw that process They brought the boat down. They dug a huge moat and they moved the boat into a A moat and then they put dirt behind it made a complete surrounding moat and then they flooded it and started hauling it Forward towards the museum and then they laid tracks from Where the boat was all the way across what would now be bay road up into the museum and they would take Uh, the rails out after they pulled the boat forward and they put the rails ahead and they leapfrog Until they got the boat all the way up into the museum and So, um About that time Ralph had a lifelong desire to find Ethan Allen's house and And of course, he was a student of the lands and in this area and everybody knew where Ethan's lands were but People wouldn't Wouldn't agree with him In terms of specifically where it was Because the town court's office in Burlington had burned to the ground twice destroying all the records So they didn't have any specific records of Of where the house might have been They knew pretty much all the land that he owned but Didn't know specifically about the house and So Uh Ralph Took his boat from south Burlington and he told me he used to come down to the mouth of the river and he would come up the Winooski river here and he would look To see a site And a house that possibly could have been Ethan's house Well from my memory going back to the 80s When I first came here, there wasn't a tree to be seen It was all meadowland and it was flat and The only structure here was Ethan's house and in this barn and uh this barn was built by Al Morrow who Married burrow and they own the peace grain company together and they built that barn to store hay and crops that they raised here and uh So the the only house was Was the the allen house But you couldn't tell that it was a primitive house. It had been added on to Several times. There was an addition here one there one over here and the roof line had changed and and so on Morrow was a student of history, but She didn't kept looking and looking and he told me I would come here and I would sit out there And I'd look at this house and say it has to be Ethan's house so somewhere along those years he got involved With uh, what would become the Winooski Valley Park district, which were I think five towns that Fronted on the river that we're trying to put together an association to uh Have some input into how Their towns were going to develop along the river so So he did that and uh he was He was pretty much able to Determine without even knowing it that this for sure had to be allen's house So I think he helped raise The money to buy and that 200 acres That they wound up with here and And once they they acquired the property in the name of the Winooski Valley park district He got serious about Tearing the house apart to see if in fact it was Ethan's house So he went to his old friend Bob francis who worked at the chauvin museum I Surveied and was responsible for taking apart every house on the chauvin museum And moving it from either out of state or some other town. There were some Buildings that came from southern brahmins and from the land share He took Two major buildings for shelter and uh They were brick buildings And he took them apart and I'm back to museum resurrected. That's no easy task and uh so Ralph not Ralph, but bob had retired by the time Ralph said I've got to prove that this is Ethan's house So we went to bob said, you know, will you come out of retirement? and come down and Now that we own this house you can start taking it apart to see if the original dimensions match What Ethan ordered? So he did. I don't know how long that took but They ended up with a house that was what 20 something by 22 by 32 So Once he proved that he got very excited about resurrecting the renovating the island house So he I don't know where he got the money, but he told me that it took about 200 000 dollars to uh Pull the house apart renovate it and put it back together So That's how they found found the house and decided to go forward I can't relate to you the the exact time frame that may it's my understanding. Angie told me that uh They were doing some research right Angie to find out Um When all the exact Negotiations were complete when I got involved here in the 1980s um Everything was done by the handshake and talking. There were not many uh written records and From day one there was a lot of arguing and disputing between Raoul and and The musky valley park district and and as they matured and The way I got involved here, um at at the home site was as Angie said, um I My first job was with the Connecticut general life insurance company an old company like john hancock and net and so on And uh, they had a an old office in brownton and A number of agents through the years and I was hired as a what they call the management trainee And the number that they gave me was to call on 750 orphan policy holders People who had bought policies And their agents had died moved away retired or whatever And I was supposed to call them make an appointment go out and talk with them You know as you've been a fishery current do you need anymore do you have any questions this and that So I did that for a year and it was a lot of fun and uh One of the people that I called on was borough moral who was the owner of the bees grain company She was a direct descendant of daniel webster She went to a business college somewhere in new England and when she finished she Came to brownington got a job with the peace grain company and After a number of years missus peas died and sold solar the company I don't know anything about missus peas And she was an old maid as I understand it and uh The company was a successful operating company, but it wasn't huge so borough ran the company one day Salesman came in looking for a job and she hired him and his name Was al moral and I don't know how long he stayed there before they got married, but they did And uh, he was pretty aggressive guy and he's this barn and uh, and he was first grade guy and so She was one of the people that I had to call on and being very interested and she liked to talk I uh, I used to come two days a week at 1030 in the morning to talk with her about insurance and history of brownington which he liked But we had to be done by quarter of 12 so that she could drive down north avenue Go to her house have lunch and watch the soap operas every day So so I did that for a long time and uh one day I went there And she said now she asked me where I lived and and I said I live on king street and she said well I'm a Trent. Do you pay and I said 36 dollars a month including heat and hot water So she said well, do you think you could afford 50 dollars a month? And I said yeah, I could probably manage that why She said well, I have a tenants house and I'd like you to move in So that's how I got here. I moved into the tenants house And uh, it was lots of fun and uh, they also raised eggs here. They had thousands of chickens And uh, so they had long hen houses around the property that they had people that tended to and they sold eggs so um So that was uh very interesting and uh So along About that time I I uh had gone from being a management trainee to A full-time agent. They wanted me to be a manager, but I didn't want to leave for months So I said I'll become an agent work on commissions So I did that and uh the years went by and I Then was approached by a couple of young guys who Were in the process trying to buy the chase mill and there was a business in there called riverside wholesale paper company and I don't know where the paper came from but they uh They provided in service Just about every general store in vermont in new Hampshire They sold everything you can imagine that a general store would sell fishing tackle guns No food, but bags clothes every possible thing you can imagine so these two young guys wanted to buy The business and they went to duddly davis And duddly said he would finance the business but not the building So why don't you go and find somebody else to buy the building and they sit back to you? So I didn't know either of these people, but they Came to me and said what I Consider buying the building So I looked at it and It was it was a wreck It had closed in 1953 when the korean war ended from about 1900 to the 50s It produced only woolen clothing for the military and so These two old gentlemen the korean brothers bought the the property and they started this wholesale supply company and They did very well and and then they wanted to retire I don't know how they found these two young guys, but They they came to me and said would you consider Buying the building and leasing it back to us. So again, I went I looked at it and uh Of course, I was young and inexperienced and didn't know that if you could look through the roof it wasn't very stable and And it had a 100 amp service had one Toilet with a with a pull string on the light bulb in in the toilet and So anyway, I went to Clark Revelle's office good old attorney in town and told him that I could buy this and I probably could afford it and Um, would they do a lease for me? So they did a lease For me which cost in those days that was 1977 cost $6,000 so I thought that was a lot. They said I was protected. So The business operating for about 18 months. I got my Check every month and they put money into escrow for the repair of the building and so on and uh at the end of the 18th month Rent stop coming So I went over there They had one employee employees said that They left on Friday and said they were never coming back And so here I am, you know standing there wondering, what do I do now? So I I went there every day for two or three weeks and I Just sort of stood guard because I thought that the creditors would start knocking on the door And want money or merchandise? Well after several weeks Only one creditor sent me a letter and said that they wanted 125,000 dollars worth of merchandise So I said that's no problem. Come on over and bring your your big truck and I'll help you load it So we went out and we one day it took us about a day To go through they had a list of things that they wanted And so we filled up the tractor trailer truck they left. I never heard from move in And I never heard from any other creditor so After a month or so I decided boy, I'm in trouble. I have This huge building about 300,000 square feet and you can't imagine it was filled The ceilings were 15 feet high. It was filled from florida ceiling with merchandise of every kind you could imagine clothing, fishing tackle, guns So anyway, I put a I put a sign out front A space for rent Will build a suit Well That was 1977 79 Imagine this in all of greater brongton chitman county. There wasn't one 10 building There were no 10 buildings as we know today that businesses Have nothing if you wanted a space to start a business you were in trouble. There wasn't much available so I thought well, I'll just uh the whole building was divided into columns 12 feet by 24 feet and so People would come we'd walk down the aisles we'd count off the The divisions and I we'd look back at the space and I'd say don't well, how much space do you need? Well, I don't know. Well, look at the space. Is that enough to do what you need to do? So they'd say yes, nobody brought an attorney. Nobody brought an architect It just didn't happen that way so I I walked everybody off. I hired carpenters plumbers and In two years and I got through I had 52 tenants in the building And every major company in brongton started their biotech jog bra American mailings resolution They all came And I built their space for them and it was beautiful space They loved it had oil wood floors and The floors were pine planks about 10 inches wide with a spline in them And they oiled the floors when the mill was running every Friday night. So the whole place was wreaked of oil So anyway That's uh, how I rented the the mill out and uh, and it was It was the best 10 years of my life. I had it for 10 years and I met wonderful people and One day while I was there And at this point I hadn't met Ralph Hill or George Little or any of the people I worked with but George Little and and Ralph Hill were going by and they saw the changes taking place at the mill So they stopped in and they said, you know, what's going on here? So I talked with them and uh And they thought it was great that I was renovating the mill And they had also heard that I knew the molansons Who happened to own the old mill tavern in manuski, which was famous Dimey beers and when you went in you had put a 50 cent deposit on your glass because Everybody was all the students were stealing the glasses and uh, so So We began talking and we talked about the history of the mill We talked about the the allen farm and that's how I I got to know Ralph and uh, so We struck up a great friendship and from that point on we were together a lot. Well In the process of doing the mill the flood of 27 had come roaring down and had filled the whole Basement the the mill was built on a great big ledge slid down towards Where the bridge is now and and it had filled it all with silt and there was no No entry to it And there was really no reason to be in there except to work on on equipment So, um, I Crawled in one day There was about two feet of crawl space between the top of the silt and the floor So I crawled all the way in and uh, and I crawled around and and I uh I found I've got to show you something Looking for Discovered about two feet of the silt and so you had two gigantic wheels that you'll see That were they were about 10 feet high. They had these huge cast iron Lugs in between the spindles that held the wood together and they faced the river and the river was there And there was a slot in the wall behind one of the wheels And those wheels were about 30 inches wide and they had leather belts on them One other belt went out through the slot on the side of the building And it was hitched with a huge iron wheel that was turned by The river coming down and turning an undershot wheel versus an overshot wheel which turned like that So There was a belt from one side to the inside Then you had the wheel next to it And there were street floors above in the mill and again about 30 inches wide where it actually went from the silt all the way up to the third silt And then on every floor there was a there was a great big amount of leather Another wheel here pulled that lever down and pushed that wheel into the belt And because those wheels were running all the time pushing that belt in on each floor it then was connected on that floor to spindles that went the whole length of the belt building the 300 feet long and you had spindles running the whole length of every floor not only one one here over here and here where employees could know them and they would make the operating system of thousands of them and the wheel all powered by a leather wheel off of the So they could be making it hard to make in charge They're all powered from those wheels So I'm in there crawling around I see those wheels and I say boy I'd like to have an office down here so so there was no entry there so I got hold of a big excavator brought them in against the what would have been the east end of the building and I had them dig a hole a big hole about half the size of this porch and he went down 10 feet and there we hit all this beautiful redstone which is very hard it's on the order of granite and the went around in a conveyor with the bottom years I did that the foundation was 33 inches wide at the bottom and then on top of these walls they put one inch thick cast iron plate and then all the beams from the building were on these uh, did they get to see those pictures in the back? Did you see those? and so so all of the wood in the mill was resting on cast iron plates nothing touched stone or brick because that attracted moisture and would rub the beams out so anyway dug the hole I hired the main drilling and blasting company to come over drill through the the stone walls and blast me out a hole so they blasted out a hole 10 feet and then I brought in a small Kubota excavator and I got all the five guys with wheel barrels and the guy with the excavator loaded the wheel barrels and the guys took it out the north side of the building and dumped all the fill because it had all been washed away by the flood so when you went outside the wall the land dropped off like this so I filled it all back in made a nice lawn had flower gardens and so on by the time I got through I had 2500 square feet of nice space that I could develop into an office so I did and when you look at those wheels um that's after my office was finished my desk was right in front of it and my office was 900 square feet which is a big room and uh so after I I met Ralph and he started coming down there they all wanted to hang out in my office so about once every two weeks I'd have Ralph George Little Hilton Wick all kinds of people would come there and we would sit there and we would talk about how are we going to resurrect you know in Homestead and uh so that's where it all started was in the the basement of of that mill in terms of how do we do it so we talked and we talked and we periodically out here and we'd look at the house and and uh we just had an understanding that the house had to be uh presented to the public so Ralph told us one day he said I know an architect in New York that might give us some advice his name is Richard Robinoowitz and he was the architect of South Street Seaport Miracle of Philadelphia and so on a really knowledgeable guy so we invited him up he looked at this empty building looked at the Allen House and he went back to New York and and then he called me one day and said why don't you come to New York and look at some of the things that I've done I can show you pictures so five of us Lola Aiken Lincoln Brownow Hilton Wick got any others but we drove to New York we stayed over two nights and and we talked at length Robinoowitz and he said I'll be back in touch so we drove back to Brownington and he he then sent us some drawings and said you know you have you finish your house you've done a nice job but now you have to present it to the public and you need a place to do that and he said you've got this nice barn finish that barn off so you can have meetings in there and people can be in out of the weather and this and that so we talked about it and and uh and that was before Ralph died Ralph died in December of 87 I think and uh right up until that point we had finished the house but we didn't know what else we were going to do except that we we needed to do something and probably finish his barn so Ralph had told me that he had bone cancer and that it was slow growing and he'd probably be around to give us advice and so on but if he wasn't what I promised him that I'd finish finished the job so that's how I really got stuck and I said yeah I'll finish it so you know Ralph instead of having bone cancer and dying he had a cerebral memory which one night when he died in his sleep so all of a sudden here we are we have spent a lot of talk and we have an idea and we're saying okay we have to finish this so the people that I got together was George Little Lincoln Brownell Nathan Ansel Lola Aiken Sylvia Kaiser John Yeowing and Hilton Wick and myself and we said what are we going to do by that time I had gotten some estimates in and the estimates were all coming in at eight or nine hundred thousand dollars to do what we wanted to do here so we we had several meetings and we talked and I had narrowed it down to doing business for the Farrington construction company because they were local they were honest they had some good thoughts and so on so we decided to go with them and the price was eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars so where are we going to get eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars so I was decided that I knew Hilton I should go to Hilton and then talk with him about alone to do this construction so I did and wasn't much to it he said yeah if you all sign personally no problem so we did and uh we we borrowed the eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars and then the crew elected me to to go negotiate further with the bank sign the paperwork and to then negotiate the contract with Farrington construction which I did so we started in and it was a several month process if not a year to go through and do everything we did and and we had you know like any construction you had one issue after another that you didn't count on that popped up so that's how we we raised the money to to turn this building into the what we call the orientation center and it was decided to be the Brown Owl Hilton orientation center because Lincoln Brown Owl guaranteed the most money my recollection was that he gave us about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars to to get started and uh and Lincoln had been a childhood friend of Ralph's they both grew up on South Bullard Street in Burlington they went to schools together and then they separated when they went to college and and Lincoln went in um Lincoln went in to um and I shut that off if I don't let's go bringing Lincoln uh went into the service became a pilot and was very famous I think for flying the most number of trips over the hump and not being shot down and uh so he was a very interesting guy and through the years he in the war he met a French Vietnamese officer whose family was well respected in Vietnam and this um individual said to Lincoln what and he came back to Vietnam when this war is over and we'll start a business together so they did and uh they wound up with probably the biggest American business in Vietnam they had the import licenses for all the automobiles appliances and all kinds of things they made a fortune and uh and so Lincoln and his family stayed there in Vietnam for many years they'd come back here a few times a year and his kids all went to prep schools around the country and uh so he was there when Vietnam War was in process he also owned a large tourist agency in in Saigon and probably because the Viet Cong trusted him because he had been there he became the spokesman for the US military dealing with the with the Viet Cong and every morning at six o'clock he told me that he would talk to them and they'd tell him how to get more people out get them on the planes don't remind them visas just pack your planes get them out and and every day they would check with them to see how many people got out well came down to the final two days and they told him to more morning at six o'clock you and your wife and another officer and his wife who were there who had been processing paperwork beyond the six o'clock plane it's the last plane had I care so he left and that was it he left everything behind his business and everything and his partner stayed they arrested him put him in jail I don't know whether he was ever executed or not but he didn't have an easy time with it so that's how Lincoln made his money and was generous with it to us and I have Lincoln used to come into my office and he would sit there by the hour and narrate the history of what happened and I've got about 10 hours of tape recordings that he recorded in my office about his experiences in Vietnam and I have never shared those with anybody I still have them and one of the things I hope to do if I live long enough is to resurrect him get him out and see what I might be living so okay so any questions about what I've said to you that'll be some questions Did the morals ever live in the house here? No They did not Yeah one of their employees lived in the house he was a they always had a lot of employees and they had maybe two two families lived in this house because it was quite large by the time they added on to it to the house Other questions? Any questions about any of the other founders? We had the founders were were Hill George Little Lincoln Brownell Nathan Ansel Lola Aitken Sylvia Kaiser John Ewing Hilton Wick and myself Those were the key people who signed on the dotted line there were several others there was Nick Muller historian Bob Brownell Sam Hamm Meg Ostrom Lois McClure We had hundreds of other people that donated money after we got going but up until then we were the key people Is the house over this way here through this walkway here? What about it Jeremy? Is the Ethan Allen house through this walkway over here? Yeah that's Ethan Allen's house right here and if you haven't been in we should go in and and look at it Let's do that I know it's difficult to run date buildings what is the best date that is put on to the original structure? Somebody else might be able to give you the exact date but when I was involved Ethan ordered the lumber cut in 1783 the house was constructed I think in 1785 and he moved in in 1787 and died in 1789 I think a picture of that about right? Did he? Yes he did No you could probably find some references to it but it was my understanding that it went all the way to the lake all along North Avenue right up into Burlington I mean this was considered Burlington even though the other side of the river was Colchester and after he died a lot of family members stepped in and helped to raise money for and initially the lands on the other side of the river I believe were leased out for farmlands and then eventually they were sold off pardon today it was like Ethan Allen Yeah Yeah it was so we had both sides of the river right here yesterday I volunteered and we have 14 files of notes and papers so I say if you want you need to do something about moving nodes and digitizing and so forth so I took a couple forward of home last night and one of those that I was looking at was a letter written by Ralph Lady Hill that they did on August 6, 1985 to the Secretary of the Agency of Transportation about William I'll just read this one paragraph John, could you speak into the microphone please Okay, yeah, please so the letter says Dear Secretary Cranton in view of the fact that the Northern connector the belt line right around North Avenue in Burlington crosses through the heart of Ethan Allen's farm and passes his restored homestead which will become a national historic site and park I would like to propose that the road from where it leads the Interveil at the Interveil Avenue until it reaches the new bridge over the Winterski be called the Ethan Allen Memorial Drive and that'd be appropriately marked at either end so it's interesting that that was a proposal I don't believe it's ever been acted upon but it might be something that we should look into Susan was a personal friend of mine and her husband was an attorney who grafted my my lease for the chase mill so everything was very close here but I had never heard that that's that's interesting one other item of interest which I'll reproduce and pass around at some point Ethan Allen captured the fort in 1775 in two days after he captured it he wrote a personal letter to George Washington telling him about the state of affairs and how dismal it was and this and that and he personally signed it which was interesting because in those days they had inscribes that made the copies and then the principles who maybe dictated the letter like in this case Allen would sign or yeah Allen Allen would sign it well in this case he not only signed the letter but he wrote it out and while I was here we had hired a consultant to tell us how to finish the inside of the house and he was a collector of textiles old textiles he was down in an old store in the heart of Old Albany poking around and he bought a whole box of textiles for five bucks or something like that and he took it home started going through it and lo and behold here was one of these original letters from Ethan Allen and so he came to me and at my chase mill I had a safe that came out of the fifth floor of the the at the top of Church Street of the Masonic Temple and I was there one day and they were taking the furniture out sewing it all out and I bought this beautiful safe the inside was all painted with oils and pictures and I bought it on the ground for 350 bucks and had them delivered to my office at the chase mill four feet wide and six feet high and the way it dies when I sold it we had to weigh it weighed 5,035 pounds and so anyway this guy that I got to know quite well wanted to know if I would store this original letter from him so he gave me the letter I put it in my safe and I didn't see him again for about three years and he showed up one day and said well I'd like to have my letter back so I had made copies of it which I still have he sold the letter for a hundred thousand dollars and it was sold to a Vermont doctor lived at the time in San Francisco and I've forgotten his name but he's got the biggest collection of each and all and it's tough what's the name? so so anyway it's kind of a neat letter it's I got copies of it so any other questions? what would like to do with the problem is to thank you for coming and the study tradition around here that we give our speakers of Ethan Allen Mudd if you don't have one already in your collection so all right thank you very much and age you but perhaps you may want to say a few words about what's happened next week okay so coming up next week we have our biggest week of the year here at the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum Thursday is a Vermont state holiday called Ethan Allen Day and so we have free admission here at the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum on Thursday so please come by if you haven't yet been to the Allen House you can take a tour and then the following weekend so next weekend is Ethan Allen weekend and we have revolutionary warrior actors traditional artisans doing demonstrations we have our one of our wood carvers here today hi Bob we'll see you then and it's going to be a big big weekend with lots of fun things there's going to be a garden tour in addition to the house tours and militia demonstrations so please bring your families and spread the word for that but before we get to that we still have one last thing to do up here so we had this talk strategically planned for Father's Day for Tom Anderson as one of our Founding Fathers as a Father's Day gift from the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum we have a little gift for you we have a beautiful watercolor painting of the Allen House here at the Homestead that we'd like to gift to you so you can remember us and as a thank you quite like this that I will donate back to the Homestead that you can put up so thank you that's wonderful that's beautiful I think we have three people who get yes or nothing else I was just going to say I'm going to put these poster boards that the wind knocked down I'll put them back up here and for those of you didn't know Ralph Needing Hill is is one of the men in one of the photographs so you can come up and look at them or ask our lecture any other questions you might have