We are told that Allen in his early life was very intimate with Dr. Thomas Young, the man who supplied the state with its name, "Vermont," in April, 1777, and who so strongly encouraged it to assert its independence. One of the most noted characteristics of Ethan, his fondness for the society of able men, is illustrated in his association with Young.
Dr. Young, who was a distinguished citizen of Philadelphia, was on most of the Whig committees in Boston, before the Revolution, with James Otis, Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, and others. He and Adams addressed the great public meeting on the day "when Boston harbor was black with unexpected tea." He was a neighbor of Allen, living in the Oblong, in Dutchess County, while Allen lived in Salisbury. Afterward he lived in Albany, and died in Philadelphia in the third year of Allen's captivity. He was influential in causing Vermont to adopt the constitution of Pennsylvania.
The Oblong, Salisbury and vicinity, abounded in free thinkers. Young and Allen opposed President Edwards' famous theological tenets, the latter spending much time in Young's house, and it was generally understood that they were preparing for publication a book in support of sceptical principles; the two agreeing that the one that outlived the other should publish it. Allen, on going to Vermont, left his manuscripts with Young, and on his release from captivity after Young's death obtained from the latter's family, who had gone back to Dutchess County, both his own and Young's manuscripts, and these were the originals of his "Oracles of Reason."
[CHAPTER III.]
REMOVAL TO VERMONT.—THE NEW HAMPSHIRE GRANTS.
Allen came to Vermont, probably, in 1769, a year memorable for the founding of Dartmouth College and for the birth of four of earth's renowned men: two soldiers, Wellington and Napoleon; two scholars, Cuvier and Humboldt.
In the early history of Vermont, one of its prominent judges speculated extensively in Green Mountain wild lands. The aggregate result of these speculations was disastrous. Attending a session of the legislature, the judge was called upon by a committee for his advice in reference to suitable penalties for some crime. He replied, advising for the first offence a fine; for the second, imprisonment; and if the criminal should prove such a hardened offender, such a veteran in vice as to be guilty the third time, he recommended that the scoundrel should be compelled to receive a deed of a mile square of wild Vermont lands. Speculation in wild lands is a feature of pioneer society. Vermont was once the agricultural Eldorado of New England. Emigration first rolled northward. Since that time a certain star, erroneously supposed to belong to Bishop Berkeley, has been travelling westward.
In 1749 Benning Wentworth, Governor of New Hampshire, issued a patent of a township, six miles square, near the northwest angle of Massachusetts and corresponding with its line northward, and in this township of Bennington the Allens bought lands and made their home. This grant caused a remonstrance from the governor and council of New York. Similar remonstrances had been made in the cases of Connecticut and Massachusetts, each of whom claimed that their territory extended to the Connecticut River. But that question had been settled in the former cases between New York and New England by agreeing upon a line from the southwest corner of Connecticut northerly to Lake Champlain as the boundary between the provinces. Wentworth urged in justification of his course that the boundary line was well known, and that New Hampshire had the same right as the other colonies of New England, and he persevered in his own course. In 1754 fourteen new townships had been granted, when the French war broke out and the settlers were deterred from occupying their lands by the incursions of the French and Indians on the frontier and the uncertainty of the termination of the contest; but when Canada was reduced by the English and peace concluded, there was a new rush for the possession of the fertile lands by the hardy and adventurous sons of the old New England colonies. In four years Governor Wentworth granted one hundred and thirty-eight townships, and the territory included was called the New Hampshire Grants. Then began in bitter earnest the long controversy between New York and New Hampshire for the ownership of all the territory now known as Vermont.