Of her brothers and sisters, only Mrs. Van Rensselaer and General Pierre Van Cortlandt survived her. The latter died recently at Peekskill. Her daughter, Mrs. De Peyster, resides in New York; and her son, Dr. S. D. Beekman, at Tarrytown on a part of the old place.
XL. FRANCES ALLEN.
* The reader is indebted for this sketch to the pen of Mr. H. R. Schoolcraft.
Of the men of strong energy of thought or action, who arrested public attention during the momentous period of the Revolution, there is scarcely one who assimilates at all to the zealous and erratic, yet firm and indomitable Ethan Allen. He had been schooled in the fierce conflicts in which New Hampshire on the one side, and New York on the other, contended for legal jurisdiction and sovereignty over the present area of Vermont; and his bold character had fitted him, when the people refused to submit to either, to be the functionary of popular will, in administering justice without law, and maintaining independence without a government. He possessed traits in common with William Tell, Wat Tyler, and Brennus, the conqueror of Rome; but was in himself unique and original, acting and thinking on the spur of occasion, as few other men have ever done. His views of theology were as curious as those of politics; yet he had fixed points for both; and when the contest of 1775 drew on, he boldly grasped his sword, and by a sudden movement summoned Ticonderoga to surrender, "in the name of God and the Continental Congress." Here, then, were the two points of his faith, which led him forward in a series of bold and masterly movements and adventures; in which he was indeed but the exponent of the feelings and views of a bold, hardy, Tyrolese-like yeomanry, who had settled on the sides of the Green Mountains, and glowed with an unquenchable love of civil liberty. The result was, that they cast off effectually both the authority of New Hampshire and New York, and coming patriotically to the rescue of the United Colonies, at a time of "bitter need," secured their own independence, and gave the name of Vermont to the pages of future history. In all this Ethan Allen was the leader; and it is upon him, more than any other individual, that we are to look as the founder of that patriotic State.
Whom such a man married—who became the counsellor and companion of his secret and private hours, it may be interesting to inquire! The results of such an inquiry are indeed as unique and original as the rest of the traits of his life, and show a curious correspondence, acting by reverse affinities, in the mysterious chain of the marriage tie.
The wild and adventurous character of Allen's early life prevented him from forming a youthful attachment; and he had enacted his most daring scenes before he appears to have thought of it. It was owing to the curiosity and interest arising from the domestic recital of one of these daring adventures of the Green Mountain hero, that an acquaintance was brought about, which resulted in an attachment between two individuals from the antipodes of American society—the one a bold, rough, free-spoken democrat, and stickler for the utmost degree of power in the people; the other a well-educated and refined young lady of high aristocratic feelings, the daughter of a British field-officer who had served with distinction in the ante-revolutionary French wars, and the grand-daughter of a proud veteran British artillerist, who had also served with reputation under the Duke of Marlborough, and came to America after the treaty of Utrecht, with the most extravagantly exalted notions, not only of the part he had borne in the field, but of the glorious reign of Queen Anne, under whose banners he had served. Miss Fanny Brush, who was destined to be the wife of the bold Vermonter, was the daughter of Colonel Brush of the British army, whose military acts at Boston just before the Revolution, gave notoriety to his name. This officer had served under General Bradstreet, commanding at Albany, at whose mansion he became acquainted with, and married Miss Elizabeth Calcraft, the daughter of James Calcraft, * a retired veteran of the army of Queen Anne, who enjoyed in a high degree the friendship and confidence of the British general.
* This name is changed to Schoolcraft in that county, in a rather too graphic allusion to the last employment of the declining days of a soldier of fortune—a pilgrim of the sword from England, and withal a man of letters.
After the death of Colonel Brush, Mrs. Brush, by whom he had but a single child, married Mr. Edward Wall, and removed with him to the township of Westminster, in Vermont. The position chosen by him for his residence, was one of the most beautiful and picturesque in that section of the fertile valley of the Connecticut. The settlement in that town, is one of the oldest and best cultivated in the State; and the society of that portion of the new district, which had originally been settled as part of the "New Hampshire grants," excelled, as it preceded others, in comforts and refinement. Such was at least the wealth and position of Mr. Wall, that he spared no expense in the education of his daughter, Miss Brush, who was sent to the capital of New England to complete her accomplishments. She was in her eighteenth year when Ethan Allen, liberated from the Tower of London, returned to his native State, with the fame of his daring deeds not a little exalted by reports of his sayings and doings beyond the water. Among other reports which probably had very little foundation, it was said that he had bit off a tenpenny nail while in the Tower of London. "I should like," said Miss Brush, one evening, in a mixed company in her father's parlor, "above all things to see this Mr. Allen, of whom we hear such incredible things."