Thursday, August 13, 2020

Revolutionary War Loyalties in Vermont

From VTDigger:
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. (Read more.)
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