Something About Ethan Allen

He's got the way to sell me chairs.

Jan. 21 is the birthday (on some calendars*) of Ethan Allen (1738-89), the American Revolutionary War patriot and politician. He is best known as one of the founders of Vermont and for the capture of Fort Ticonderoga early in the Revolutionary War.

He and the Green Mountain Boys captured Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775. In Sept. Allen led a failed attempt on Montreal which resulted in his capture by British authorities. He was imprisoned aboard Royal Navy ships, then paroled in New York City, and finally released in a prisoner exchange in 1778. Allen later lobbied Congress for Vermont's official state recognition, and he participated in controversial negotiations with the British over the possibility of Vermont becoming a separate British province.

Many of you may recognize his name from the furniture and housewares manufacturer, Ethan Allen Inc., founded in 1932 in Beecher Falls, Vermont. In 1939 the company debuted a 28-piece line of colonial-style furniture named for the Vermonter -- and I guess the rest is history.

Professor Childermass goes into this history – of Allen, of Benedict Arnold, of Fort Ticonderoga - while driving into Vermont with Johnny Dixon and Sarah Channing in The Bell, the Book, and the Spellbinder (1997).

* The actual date of birth is made confusing by differences in the conversion between the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Or was he born Jan. 10, 1737?