Ira Allen

Engraving of Ira Allen

Ira Allen (April 21, 1751 in Cornwall, Connecticut – January 7, 1814) was one of the founders of Vermont, and leaders of the Green Mountain Boys; he was the brother of Ethan Allen.

Biography

The Great Seal of the State of Vermont

Ira Allen was born in Cornwall, Connecticut, the youngest of six sons born to Joseph and Mary Baker Allen. In 1771, Allen went to Vermont as surveyor for the Onion River Land Company. The Allen brothers established the company in order to purchase lands under the New Hampshire Grants. Through this, Allen was involved in a dispute with New York over conflicting land claims in the region.[1]

He was a leading figure in the declaration of the Vermont Republic in 1777. He and his brother Ethan, along with Thomas Chittenden and others, were involved in the Haldimand Affair by their discussions with Frederick Haldimand that suggested Vermont might join the British. An alternate explanation is that they used the Haldimand negotiations to both stave off a British invasion of Vermont from Canada and to prod the Continental Congress into recognizing Vermont as an entity separate from New York and New Hampshire and admitting it to the United States.

Allen designed the Great Seal of Vermont and the seal of the University of Vermont.

Monument of UVM's founder, Ira Allen at the University of Vermont campus, Burlington, VT

In 1780, he presented to the Legislature a memorial for the establishment of the University of Vermont.[2] He contributed money and a fifty-acre (20 ha) site at Burlington. He was called the "Metternich of Vermont" and the "Father of the University of Vermont."[3] Ira Allen pledged 4000 British pounds sterling to the University of Vermont, but never donated that money. In response, the Trustees of the University of Vermont secured a Writ of Attachment on his title to the town of Plainfield to try to extract payment of his original 4000 pound pledge.[4]

Allen was Vermont's first Treasurer and held office from 1778 to 1786, when he was succeeded by Samuel Mattocks.[5] He served as the first Surveyor General of Vermont from 1779 to 1787.[6][7]

In 1789, he married Jerusha Enos, the daughter of Roger Enos and Jerusha Hayden Enos. Members of the Allen and Enos families were the original proprietors of Irasburg. Ira Allen subsequently acquired all the proprietary rights to Irasburg and deeded the town to Jerusha Enos as a wedding gift.[8][9][10]

On 25 October 1790, Ira Allen was commissioned Major General of the Third Division of the Vermont State Militia by Governor Thomas Chittenden.[11]

Ira Allen Chapel at the University of Vermont

He went to France in 1795 and sought French army intervention for seizing Canada, to create an independent republic called United Columbia.[12] He bought 20,000 muskets and 24 cannons, but was captured at sea, taken to England, placed on trial, and charged with furnishing arms for Irish rebels,[13] but was acquitted after a lawsuit which lasted eight years.[14]

He owned undeveloped land, including a stake in Barton, Vermont, and was a major stakeholder in Irasburg, Vermont, which was named after him.

He died in Philadelphia, where he had gone to escape imprisonment for debt. He was originally buried in Philadelphia's Arch Street Presbyterian Cemetery, but his remains were lost when that site was destroyed. There is a cenotaph in his memory at Wetherills Cemetery in Audubon, Pennsylvania, and another at Greenmount Cemetery in Burlington, Vermont. The Ira Allen Chapel on the University of Vermont's main campus was also named after him.[15][16]

Works

Ira Allen Miniature

He published books:

References

  1. ↑ "Ira Allen (1751–1814)". Virtual Vermont. 2010. Retrieved 2010-03-09.
  2. ↑ A.J.H Dyer (1896). "General Ira Allan". The American Monthly Magazine, Daughters of the American Revolution. R.R. Bowker Co.: 61.
  3. ↑ John Howard Brown (1900). Lamb's biographical dictionary of the United States. James H. Lamb Co. pp. 66–67.
  4. ↑ Graffagino, J. Kevin (1991). "A Hard Founding Father to Love". In Daniels, Robert. The University of Vermont, The First Two Hundred Years. Hanover NH: University of Vermont, distributed by University Press of New England. ISBN 0874515491.
  5. ↑ Vermont Secretary of State, Legislative Directory, 1981, page 105
  6. ↑ William W. Stickney (1901). "Farewell address of William W. Stickney" (PDF). Vermont Journal of the Joint Assembly. Montpelier, VT: Vermont State Archives and Records Administration: 14.
  7. ↑ Vermont Historical Society Collections. Montpelier: Vermont Historical Society. 1871. p. 427.
  8. ↑ Vermont Development Commission, Vermont Life magazine, Volumes 41–42, 1986, page 45
  9. ↑ Hamilton Child, Gazetteer and Business Directory of Lamoille and Orleans Counties, Vt., 1883, page 288
  10. ↑ Ethan Allen, Ethan Allen and His Kin: Correspondence, 1772–1819, Volume 1, 1998, page 334
  11. ↑ LiveAuctioneers (October 25, 1790). "Ira Allen's Military Commission As Major General (Lot 4 of the Early American History Auction)" (jpg). LiveAuctioneers. Retrieved 2016-02-20.
  12. ↑ Robert E. May (2002). Manifest Destiny's Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America. U. of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-2703-7. Retrieved 23 July 2008. Chapter 1
  13. ↑ Benson John Lossing (1851). The pictorial field-book of the revolution. Harper & Bros. p. 161. ISBN 0-87152-056-7.
  14. ↑ Ethan Allen Hitchcock, William Augustus Croffut (1909). Fifty years in camp and field: diary of Major-General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, U.S.A. G.P. Putnam's Sons. p. 31.
  15. ↑ "The Development of UVM's Vermontiana Collection" (PDF). Liber: A Newsletter for the Friends of Special Collections at UVM, Vol. III, No. 12. Spring 1987.
  16. ↑ Prevolos, Christine (2011). "University Green Area Heritage Study - Ira Allen Chapel (Historic Burlington Research Project - HP 206)". Burlington, Vermont: UVM Historic Preservation Program. Retrieved February 20, 2016.

External links

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