Ethan Allen, Patriot & Libertine -- In 1749, the governor of New Hampshire began giving away land to settlers willing to brave the howling wilderness of what is now Vermont. Two decades later, New York State courts decreed those grants void, opening the door for New York speculators to flood into the region, vowing to push the original settlers out of the valleys and up into the Green Mountains.
Not surprisingly, this decision didn't sit well with those already there, who established a network of military units, Green Mountain Boys, and promised to drive out the New Yorkers. A hale fellow named Ethan Allen headed up the new militia, which launched a series of effective harrying raids against the impudent New Yorkers. Green Mountain Boys destroyed homes, drove away livestock, and chased the New York sheriffs back across the border.
The American Revolution soon intervened, and Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys took up the revolutionary cause with vigor. They helped sack Fort Ticonderoga in New York in 1775, rallied to the cause at the famed Battle of Bennington, and generally continued to make nuisances of themselves to the British effort throughout the war.
Allen's fame grew as word spread about him and his Green Mountain Boys. A hard-drinking, fierce-fighting, large-living sort of guy, Allen became a legend in his own time. He could bite the head off a nail, one story claimed; another said that he was once bit by a rattlesnake, which promptly belched and died.
While Allen's apocryphal exploits lived on following his death in 1789, he also left a more significant legacy. Vermont's statehood in 1791 was due in large part to the independence and patriotism the region showed under Allen; today you can't drive very far in Vermont without a reminder of Allen's historic presence -- parks are named after him, inns boast that he once slept there, and you'll still hear the occasional story about his bawdy doings.
