Ethan Allen

Rating:
Summary: How much do you know about Ethan Allen?
Review: Every school child learns how Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys seized Fort Ticonderoga from the British. If you'd like to learn more about this colorful character, or how the Green Mountain Boys got their name, or how Vermont became a state, you'll want to read this book.

Stewart Holbrook's book about the larger-than-life hero of what was then the frontier of New England is both an entertaining and educational work. It is suitable for both adults and students. If Holbrook mixes anectdotal information along with the more scholarly facts, he must be readily forgiven, for Ethan Allen is a legendary figure and the folklore surrounding him and his gang is part of his story.

Allen's Green Mountain Boys are portrayed as something of the Robin Hood and his Merry Men of the New Hampshire Grants. The Grants, which are now the state of Vermont, comprised the desirable country disputed by New Hampshire and New York in the colonial era. The New York claimants are portrayed as wealthy land barons and speculators, while the New Hampshire folk are the honest family farmers. Ethan Allen rises up as the hero of the people in this protracted real estate battle. Many memorable confrontations are contained in this readable volume. Allen and his Boys made their headquarters in the Catamount Tavern in the Green Mountains, where they schemed against New Yorkers and the British while tossing back "stonewalls", a combination of hard cider and rum.

During the taking of Fort Ticonderoga, Allen was asked by one of the British officers "by what authority" he was seizing the fort. Allen's famed reply, "by the authority of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress" is acknowledged in the book as possible fiction. However, the rousing and belligerent nature of the words is purely in character for Allen. His equally colorful cohorts, all of them hard-drinkers, expert woodsmen, and deadeye shots, round out the picture of life on the edge of the colonized New World.

You'll enjoy this book, and you'll learn a lot about a one-of-a-kind American hero.