Courtesy of Special Collections, UVM Library
Editor’s note: Mark Bushnell is a Vermont journalist and historian. He is the author of “Hidden History of Vermont” and “It Happened in Vermont.”
[I]t’s safe to say that by the end of the American Revolution, Thomas Chittenden and his brother-in-law Sylvanus Evarts weren’t on the best of terms. Chittenden, who would become Vermont’s first governor, had actively supported the Revolution; Evarts, along with other family members, had at times backed the British.
The odd thing about this divide within Vermont’s first family is that it wasn’t odd at all. The Revolutionary War divided families like no other event in this nation’s history, even the Civil War, many historians argue. Perhaps that’s because the Civil War was largely a sectional conflict. The divisions during the Revolution ran through most communities and even families like the Chittendens.
In this, the Chittendens were in good company. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Hancock all had family members who backed the British cause. Ira and Ethan Allen witnessed their brother Levi trade with the British. John Adams had little company in being able to say afterwards, “I was happy that my Mother and my Wife … and all her near relations, as well as mine, had been uniformly of my Mind.”
These were uncertain times. To many, rebellion was anathema. Even some who thought it justified failed to endorse revolution out of fear of retribution from British authorities. Some creatively, if not honorably, found ways to have it both ways. They switched their allegiance based on which army controlled the area around them. Others backed the two sides simultaneously. One Massachusetts publisher printed two newspapers – one appealing to Revolutionaries, the other to those loyal to the Crown.
Judging simply from Chittenden’s and Evarts’ family histories, it would be hard to predict which side each man would take in the conflict. Both families had lived in East Guilford, Connecticut, for about a century before deciding to move to the new town of Salisbury, Connecticut. There, Chittenden lived as one of the wealthiest men in town and was a representative in the colonial assembly. Evarts was less wealthy, but still richer than most people in town. He was prominent enough to have served in the local government and to have married Chittenden’s sister Elisheba.
What set these men on their separate paths, and decided their fates, might have been a question of geography. During the early 1770s, they both decided to move north to see what opportunities they could find in the New Hampshire Grants. The region, which would later become Vermont, was divided into land grants by New Hampshire’s colonial governor. In 1772, Sylvanus Evarts settled in Castleton on land he purchased from one of the town’s original settlers. Soon afterwards, Chittenden started a farm on land he had secured in Williston, where he was the first settler.
If Evarts was hoping to find peace by settling in what was then largely a wild territory, he picked the wrong spot. While Williston remained comparatively calm, both sides in the Revolution used the Castleton area as a frontier outpost. Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys gathered there before launching their attack on Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775. And the next year, that section of the Grants was hit with a smallpox outbreak after the disease was brought there by American soldiers retreating from their failed invasion of Quebec.
The Castleton area was in for still more turmoil. On July 6, 1777, a group of Native Americans and Tories (colonists who sympathized with the British) attacked the small settlement, killing two militia captains. That night, American troops, retreating just ahead of an advancing British force, pitched their camp in Castleton. The next morning, about eight miles away, the British smashed the American line at the Battle of Hubbardton. The people of Castleton watched as first Hessian mercenaries and then British forces marched through town in pursuit of fleeing American soldiers. The Hessians returned to Castleton to establish camp.
Over the next 11 days, the residents of Castleton who remained faced perilous conditions that historian Gwilym R. Roberts wrote were “probably unmatched in any other section during the American Revolution.” The people of Castleton had to weigh their loyalties carefully. They owed their land titles to New Hampshire. But the Revolutionaries among them had recently declared themselves independent not just of Britain, but of New Hampshire, and had quickly drafted a Constitution that no one else wanted to recognize. In the meantime, colonial authorities had placed the Grants’ militia under the control of New York’s revolutionary government. New York officials were hostile to the very idea of the New Hampshire Grants; they maintained that the land was New York’s to grant.
Into this situation throw an occupying army, and you can see how Castleton residents might have been confused about their loyalties. On July 10, 1777, the commander of the British invasion force, Gen. John Burgoyne, ordered area residents to gather in Castleton. He gave those assembled a stark choice. They could accept his protection and demonstrate their loyalty by, among other things, wearing a piece of paper in their hat brims. Those people would be paid for any goods the British Army took from them. Those who failed to support the British could expect to have their produce stolen and risk having their property destroyed.
The Hessian commander reported that 400 people promised their allegiance to the British cause that day. A Hessian soldier contradicted the claim, saying that fully two-thirds of the town’s residents were still with the rebel cause.
Later that month, the invaders left Castleton. And the day of reckoning came for people who had agreed to help the British cause. Many were quickly forgiven, since their conversions were seen as coerced.
But a few Castleton men, including Evarts, were singled out for allegedly supporting the British willingly. Evarts was joined by his son Oliver, nephew Gilbert and Asa Landon, who was related to his son by marriage, in being the first called before Vermont’s newly created court of confiscation. The court’s job was to seize and resell the property of Tories to fund Vermont’s war efforts.
The court proceeding gives an indication of how small Vermont was at the time. Sylvanus Evarts and his co-defendants faced a court run by none other than his brother-in-law Thomas Chittenden, who had recently been elected Vermont governor. Also on the court were Matthew Lyon, whose wife was Evarts’ niece, and Timothy Brownson, who had bought property along Otter Creek through Gilbert Evarts’ father.
This web of connections, however, did nothing to help the defendants’ cases. The court judged them all to have freely aided the enemy. As such, they were forced to forfeit significant portions of their property. If there was any leniency in the ruling, it was that the court ceded part of Sylvanus Evarts’ Castleton farm to two of his other sons in return for a debt owed by Vermont to his father. The sons were also allowed to purchase other sections of their father’s property. But parts of the confiscation ruling seem arbitrary. Valuable sections of the accused’s landholdings were sold to men who themselves were rumored to have aided the British.
The lives of the three Evarts and Landon followed divergent paths after the ruling. Gilbert Evarts helped settle the town of Salisbury, where he owned additional land. Oliver Evarts fled to Canada and petitioned the British government for compensation for his losses. He recouped only about 10 percent of what he claimed Vermont had confiscated. Landon received similar compensation, even though he had claimed much smaller losses.
Three decades later, Sylvanus Evarts was too ill to work. Eli, who was running low on money to care for his father, petitioned the state Legislature for help. Though his father had been a Tory, Eli asked the Legislature for assistance because he himself had aided the American cause.
Surely enough time had elapsed since the Revolutions for lawmakers to forgive Sylvanus Evarts for his lapse in judgment. Well, apparently not. Most legislators believed the state had been lenient enough in allowing some of Evarts’ property to be repurchased by his sons. They decided that since Evarts had once supported the British, he could support himself now.