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.”
Vermont might not exist today if not for a failed business deal.
The arrangement occurred more than a half century before Vermont became a state and it involved a man who, had he lived long enough, would have been a staunch foe of Vermont independence.
The man was Benning Wentworth, a member of a prominent New Hampshire family and a leading merchant of his day, who was destined to become the first governor of New Hampshire when it became an independent colony. Wentworth’s actions would ultimately help create two states: New Hampshire and Vermont – the former through political manipulation and luck; the latter due to the vagaries of fate. But it all started with a plan to sell timber to Spain.
Wentworth made a good living selling wood from New Hampshire’s plentiful forests. For years, the principal buyer of New Hampshire timber was the British Royal Navy. But the Admiralty, which ran the navy, decided to move shipbuilding operations closer to London. So officials began buying timber from Northern Europe instead.
Needing a new customer, Wentworth arranged in 1733 to sell timber to Spain. The deal promised to make Wentworth a fortune. But soon after the timber was delivered, relations between Spain and England soured and Spanish officials refused to pay Wentworth for the shipment.
Wentworth was suddenly in massive debt, owing 11,000 pounds to his Boston creditors, who had financed the deal. Fearing that debtors prison awaited him, Wentworth secured loans from creditors in London to repay those debts. He now owed money to some influential men in England, but at least they were farther away than his Boston creditors had been.
Wentworth wasn’t the only one in trouble. His business partners also lost money on the deal. Together, they concocted a scheme to create their own kind of paper currency. The notes were just promises to pay a set amount at a future date, like bonds, though not regulated like them. Perhaps not coincidentally, the notes looked uncannily like official provincial notes, and were soon circulating widely in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts Gov. Jonathan Belcher hated paper currency. He was an advocate of hard money, coins, which at least had some intrinsic value. Belcher surely also hated the fact that a Wentworth and his powerful New Hampshire allies were meddling with his colony’s economy.
At the time, Massachusetts controlled the Province of New Hampshire. Wealthy merchants in New Hampshire chafed at the arrangement. Wentworth’s father, John, had been their leader and the highest-placed advocate for New Hampshire becoming an independent colony. While serving as lieutenant governor of New Hampshire, and technically answerable to the governor of Massachusetts, John Wentworth used his position to grant new townships. He gave large parcels to his family and associates, and also to members of the provincial assembly in hopes of securing their loyalty.
But the Massachusetts governor started granting land that John Wentworth believed belonged to New Hampshire and which was therefore his to give away. The dispute fueled John Wentworth’s desire to see New Hampshire become independent.
When John Wentworth died in 1730, Benning became the leader of the New Hampshire cabal. That same year, Jonathan Belcher became governor of Massachusetts. Any hope that the change in leadership would quell tensions quickly died. Benning did his part to kill it off.
Benning Wentworth had a way of annoying people. As a young man studying at Harvard College, he had been notorious for smashing windows and racking up fines for various offenses. Despite his behavior, he was allowed to graduate, perhaps due to his family connections. Now in his mid-30s, he found a way to annoy Gov. Belcher, who called him a “rascal” and a “contemptible simpleton.”
Benning Wentworth had learned much from his father. Seeing land as the key to enriching himself and his family and to securing political power, he continued to grant charters in the disputed territory.
Wentworth took advantage of a dispute between Belcher and his lieutenant governor, David Dunbar. Dunbar was a Massachusetts man but his clash with Belcher was so intense that he was willing to bring New Hampshire men into the government to support him. With Dunbar’s help, and over Belcher’s strong objections, Wentworth worked his way into the Massachusetts colonial assembly and soon into the more powerful colonial council. Eventually, the 12-member council was evenly divided between Belcher and Wentworth factions, which brought the colonial government to a halt.
Meanwhile, New Hampshire’s official agent in England, John Thomlinson, was taking the province’s case for independence to King George II. Thomlinson, an ally of Wentworth, portrayed Massachusetts as a wealthy colony whose policies were robbing the vitality of New Hampshire.
Thomlinson had asked Wentworth to join him in London to lobby on New Hampshire’s behalf, but Wentworth feared he would be arrested because of his unpaid debts from his calamitous timber deal. But it turned out that Wentworth’s presence wasn’t necessary. The king appointed a commission to settle the dispute. The commission sided with New Hampshire and it became an independent colony.
New Hampshire would need its own governor. Thomlinson recommended Wentworth. He asked for the political support of the same influential British merchants to whom Wentworth was indebted. His argument was this: if you help get Wentworth appointed governor, he will be in a position to repay you. If you push instead to have him locked in prison, he won’t. They saw the logic. Wentworth became governor of New Hampshire in 1741.
Once in office, Wentworth set to work to help the citizens of the colony, at least those who were related to him. And he remembered to save some for himself.
Wentworth appointed friends and family members to positions of power. He talked the colonial legislature into paying him a salary as governor, a novel idea at the time. He paid off his debts and, by the water in Portsmouth, he built a large home, which he continued to expand throughout his life.
He also worked to expand his colony. Wentworth eyed the unsettled lands to the west of the Connecticut River and smelled opportunity. When New Hampshire was created, its southern boundary had been set, but its western edge was not.
Wentworth sent a letter to New York’s governor, asking him where he thought his colony’s eastern boundary lay. New York’s governor was slow in replying, which proved a big mistake. Wentworth used the delay as an excuse, claiming it showed that New York clearly had no complaint with his granting land west of the Connecticut River. He didn’t ask permission from the Abenaki who lived on that land as their ancestors had done since time immemorial.
On Jan. 3, 1749, Wentworth wrote his first land grant. As if planting his flag, he granted the land in the extreme southwest corner of the seemingly unclaimed territory. He named it Bennington, either after himself or after his mother’s family, the Bennings. He granted some of the land to his brother-in-law, three other Wentworths, and himself.
By selling the land, and keeping some for himself for later resale, Wentworth made himself rich. Selling choice parcels to the right men helped secure him power. Between 1749 and 1764, Wentworth issued grants for 129 towns in what is today Vermont. Not surprisingly, New York disputed New Hampshire’s right to issue the grants. But Wentworth had no trouble finding buyers. He charged less than New York authorities did for the same land grants.
The men buying grants from Wentworth probably knew the papers were legally questionable, but they were willing to take the risk. Buying cheap could make their land speculation more lucrative. Among these speculators were Ethan and Ira Allen, and several of their brothers and cousins. They and other holders of New Hampshire grants banded together as the Green Mountain Boys to fight New York’s claim to the land. These parcels had been legitimately granted by New Hampshire, they argued.
Then they had another idea: This land was actually neither New York’s nor New Hampshire’s to grant. This region belonged to itself; it was an independent entity that they would name Vermont.
