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.”
The creation of Vermont, like so many things in history, was the result of a land dispute.
The history of the region can read like a series of land disputes. In prehistoric times — that is before 1609, when the French arrived and became the first to record events in writing — there were territorial struggles between various Native American tribes. Then, of course, came the conflict between Native Americans and the recently arriving Europeans. After that, the Europeans fought amongst themselves, with the British eventually wresting control of the region from the French. Then, perhaps predictably, the British colonies began fighting among themselves over who was in charge of the region.
But it was that last dispute that would ultimately, after several decades, lead to the creation of Vermont. That dispute was triggered by an action taken on Jan. 3, 1749. On that day, New Hampshire Gov. Benning Wentworth issued a charter for a town in what is today southwestern Vermont. While it isn’t at all clear Wentworth had any legal right to issue such a charter, it is clear why he would do it — money.
Wentworth, who was New Hampshire’s first governor after it became independent of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, believed that issuing charters for the land between the Connecticut River and Lake Champlain was a great way to pay off his colony’s considerable debts from the French and Indian War. It was also an easy way for him to get rich.
Between 1749 and 1764, Wentworth issued charters for 129 towns, including 65,000 acres for himself and even more for relatives and political allies. Indeed, that first town he chartered included land for himself, his family and associates. He named it Bennington; perhaps as an act of vanity, or maybe to honor his mother’s family, the Bennings.
The problem with these grants, from a legal standpoint, was that the colony of New York believed it had sole right to issue charters for this land. The colonies took their dispute to the royal British Board of Trade, which oversaw colonial matters. For years, the board failed to render a decision. It was preoccupied with other issues, particularly the question of whether the British would defeat the French for control of North America.
While a decision was pending, Wentworth continued issuing charters for more towns. During a two-and-a-half year period beginning in 1760, he chartered 116 new towns.
If pricing can be used as an indicator of people’s expectations, few believed that New Hampshire would win its legal fight with New York. Land in the Hampshire Grants, as the future Vermont was then known, cost a tiny fraction of comparable land in Maine, and even less compared to land in well-established western Massachusetts. Those other colonies were clearly safer bets. People understood that the Hampshire Grants might not be worth the parchment on which they were written. The speculative nature of the grants meant that few who held them ever intended to settle on their land. They hoped instead to turn a profit by selling the parcels to other speculators or to the intrepid few who did want to become settlers.
By selling to speculators, Wentworth violated the Crown’s wishes. Colonial governors only had permission to grant town charters once 50 men had agreed to settle the land immediately. Furthermore, land could only be granted with the understanding that one fifth of the land would be cultivated within five years, and no single landowner was to be granted more than 1,500 acres. The Hampshire Grants were more a tool to enrich speculators than a way to expand empire, as the Crown had hoped.
The Board of Trade finally issued its opinion in 1764. To Wentworth’s chagrin, it sided with New York. The boundary between New York and New Hampshire was the Connecticut River, the board declared, not Lake Champlain. The board was perhaps stating the obvious when it chided Wentworth for chartering land “with a view more to private interest than public advantage.”
New York’s colonial government had patiently awaited the board’s ruling. But once the ruling came, New York officials quickly tried to catch up with Wentworth. In seven months, New York issued land patents covering 174,000 acres in the Hampshire Grants. Not coincidentally, most of that land had already been granted by New Hampshire. New York was calling New Hampshire’s bluff.
Then, in 1766, New York played its next card. It announced that holders of New Hampshire grants could keep their titles, provided they purchase patents for the same land from New York. The fee was 10 times what the titleholders had paid New Hampshire for the land. Still, the price was not prohibitive for many titleholders, who proceeded to purchase New York patents for their land. The fee, however, was steep for speculators who held title to tens of thousands of acres. These speculators banded together to hire an agent, a lobbyist of sorts, to plead their case to authorities in London.
The appeal worked. In 1767, the king’s Privy Council told New York “do not upon pain of his majesty’s highest displeasure, presume to make any grant whatsoever” until “his majesty’s further pleasure shall be known.”
The ordered couldn’t have been clearer, so New York officials obeyed the order, at first. But when no final decision was forthcoming, they began issuing grants with abandon, eventually selling titles to nearly 2 million acres.
Meanwhile, holders of New Hampshire titles had moved quickly to have their land settled, assuming that the Crown, which was encouraging settlement, wouldn’t uproot established settlers. Between 1764 and 1771, the region’s population more than quadrupled, reaching nearly 4,000. The population would more than triple again, to more than 12,000, before 1774.
Things turned ugly in October 1769, when a group of about 60 Bennington settlers terrorized a team of New York surveyors, sending them fleeing. Though some people still tried to resolve the dispute through legal channels, intimidation of surveyors and settlers alike became common.
A group of Hampshire Grant titleholders bonded together, calling themselves the Green Mountain Boys. Their leader was Ethan Allen, a bellicose land speculator recently arrived from Connecticut. The Green Mountains Boys used threats, kidnappings and arson to drive out holders of New York titles.
New York’s legislature responded to these assaults in 1774 by passing an anti-rioting law and giving officials the right to kill to enforce it. The fight over Vermont seemed to be coming to a head. But the territorial struggle was suddenly overshadowed by outside events as the American Revolution erupted.
But the dispute was hardly forgotten. In 1777, residents of the Hampshire Grants decided the time was right to declare independence not just from British rule, but also from New York and New Hampshire. They would create their own country. As some historians have called it, it was a revolution within a revolution. The preamble to the Vermont Constitution, written by Allen’s youngest brother, Ira, dwelled far more on injustices inflicted by Yorkers than by the British.
But when the Revolution ended, New York held the upper hand over the self-styled Republic of Vermont. New York was part of the newly formed United States, which Vermont’s leaders wished to join. New York officials used their clout to block Vermont’s admission.
The old dispute was finally resolved in 1791, when Vermont agreed to pay New York the whopping sum of $30,000. After more than four decades, the land dispute had been settled.
