Notes
notes prologue 1. Sherman, 1. 2. Halbachs, 43. 3. Assman, “Transformations Between History and Memory,” 5. 4. Assman, “Memory, Individual and Collective,” 206. 5. By 1870 town school superintendents evaluated new teachers with questions about their knowledge of Ethan Allen. The Biennial Report of the Vermont Board of Education, with the Report of the Secretary, made to the Board October, 1872 (Montpelier: Freeman Steam Printing House and Bindery, 1872), presents the questionnaires from Windham and Grand Isle Counties, 160 and 170. For school histories composed in a catechetical format, see John J. Anderson, A Grammar School History of the United States (1870), 62–67, and from a teacher of prospective teachers, Samuel R. Hall, Outlines of the Geography, Natural and Civil History and Constitution of Vermont (1864). 6. Pell’s 1930 reprint of EAN listed twenty reprints and editions, 133–34. 7. Geary, 12. 8. Schwartz, 93. 9. Einhorn, 34. 10. Taylor, 3. chapter i. confused accounts of ethan allen’s death: later accounts compound the story 1. Levi Allen to Ira Allen, August 2, 1789, EAHK, 1:323–24. 2. Ira Allen to Levi Allen, June 5, 1789, EAHK, 1:315–16. 3. Ira Allen to Levi Allen, June 5, 1789, EAHK, 1:315–16. Ira parted with Levi in Montreal, where Levi unsuccessfully sought passage to England, then headed for Boston, conducting business in Clarendon and several other Vermont towns, Chester, New Hampshire, and Boston. Delayed by winter weather and a serious leak in the first ship he boarded, Levi finally sailed on the brig Mary Clement on March 1789 without news of Ethan’s death. See Levi Allen to Ethan Allen, January 27, 1789, EAHK, 1:290; two subsequent letters in February from Levi Allen to Ira Allen, February 15 and 21, 1789; and two letters from Levi Allen to Ira Allen and Nancy Allen, February 23 and March 19, 1789, EAHK, 1:290, 291, 292, and 295. Van de Water, Reluctant Republic, 333, and Dwight, 2:284, on March 13; Williamson, 156, and Randall, 527, on March 17. 230 } Notes to Pages 11–14 4. Ethan Allen to Stephen R. Bradley, November 16, 1787, EAHK, 1:249–50. 5. Nathan Perkins, 27–28. 6. RG & C, 3:181. 7. South Hero’s nineteenth-century historian reported that Ebenezer Allen’s first house was a traditional 16' x 16' log cabin, “a very comfortable log house”; Hemenway, 2:520. After 1787 a frame addition served as a public house and in the nineteenth century was incorporated into a larger building still standing on the site. Hemenway, 2:262. Nobility in fact once slept at Allen’s public house, in the person of the future father of Queen Victoria, Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent, on a journey from Montreal to New York City in 1793 accompanied by his mistress Thérèse Bernadine Montgenêt, also known as Mme de Saint-Laurent. See Mollie Gillen, The Prince and his Lady: The Love Story of the Duke of Kent and Madame de St Laurent (St. Martins Press: London, 1970). 8. Stewart H. Holbrook, 249–50. 9. Van de Water, Reluctant Republic, 333. 10. Jellison, 330. 11. Charles Miner Thompson, 351. 12. EAN, 9, 124. 13. Rees, 251–63. 14. Burlington Free Press, March 26, 1943. Jellison relies on the Free Press account, notes Stewart H. Holbrook’s “entertaining . . . fictionalized” version of Allen’s night at Ebenezer’s place on South Hero, but then discounts these and all other accounts by noting that Allen became comatose on the sled returning to Burlington on the lake’s ice and remained so until his death later in the day (330 and 350). Pell says that Allen never slept during his “Final Frolic,” and died on February 17 while crossing the ice on the sled (268, 317). Bellesiles avoids the traditional story of the night before Allen’s death and, following Pell, reports him dying on February 17 on the ice. Revolutionary Outlaws, 256. 15. Jellison, 330. 16. Hemenway reports Reverend A. Fleming, 1:536, and Reverend A. Witherspoon , 1:546. 17. Nathan Perkins, 32. 18. Hemenway, 1:571. 19. Ira Allen attributed his brother’s death to “arperplaxey,” a generic term that probably included ischemic stroke. Medical researchers have concluded that “stroke occurrence rises with decreasing temperature, and that even a moderate decrease in temperature can increase the risk of ischemic stroke.” See Epidemiology, 14:473–78. Other research has reported that cold weather can increase hospital admittances for stroke or heart attack. See...
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