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Revolution and empire on the northern frontier: Ira Allen of Vermont, 1751-1814
Abstract
Ira Allen was the quintessential late-eighteenth-century frontier entrepreneur. At the age of 21, he founded the Onion River Land Company, a loose family partnership designed to speculate in land titles to the disputed northern New England territory known as the New Hampshire Grants. By the time he turned 40, Allen claimed ownership of more than 100,000 choice acres along the eastern shore of Lake Champlain. Where most of his contemporaries saw an inhospitable wilderness, Allen anticipated a Champlain Valley of thriving communities, busy commercial centers, and extensive trade, all under his profitable control. Combining a romantic faith in the future of the backcountry with a relentless drive to acquire more land, he devoted his life to the elusive goal of prosperity in the area he called "the country my soul delighted in." Yet there was more to Allen's tangled career than land speculation and development schemes. He was a key figure in the oligarchy that preserved the independence of the fledgling State of Vermont during the American Revolution, serving as Vermont's first Treasurer, Surveyor-General, and tireless ambassador-at-large. Absorbing the rhetoric of the national struggle against England, he adapted it for local application by writing books, pamphlets and broadsides that described Vermont as an unyielding opponent of foreign and domestic tyranny. After the war, Allen led the drive to create the University of Vermont, which he envisioned as a beacon of republican virtue and educational opportunity for the common man. When his Green Mountain empire collapsed, he planned revolutions in Canada and Mexico in desperate, unsuccessful attempts to regain his lost power and wealth. In his grand dreams, remarkable achievements, and ultimate failure, Ira Allen was an outstanding example of the backwoods leaders whose blending of personal and public priorities influenced the development of the American frontier from Maine to the Carolinas.
Subject Area
American history|Biographies
Recommended Citation
Graffagnino, Jonathan Kevin, "Revolution and empire on the northern frontier: Ira Allen of Vermont, 1751-1814" (1993). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9316655.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9316655