Ambition: The Remarkable Family of Ethan Allen by Glenn Fay, Jr.
Ambition unravels the Allen family’s adventures during their mid-1700s hardscrabble childhoods, business undertakings, homesteading, and developing the wilderness that is now Vermont. The area was an unceded Native homeland, claimed by the French, later won by the British, and simultaneously owned by New York and New Hampshire.
The Allen siblings and their close associates grew up in Cornwall, Connecticut during and after the Seven Years’ War, fought the British, raised families during the American Revolution, and invested in the Green Mountain wilderness, pursuing the American dream. The book explores their hardship lifestyles and relationships, and near-death experiences in the woods. The stories are based on their letters, legal documents, essays, and other primary sources dating back to the 1760s. It includes rare portraits, maps, and documents that have never before been published.
The Allens were unusually ambitious men and women who fundamentally shaped early Vermont and the unique ethos of Vermont today. The sobering realities of their diets, medicine, everyday lives, life expectancy, and survival are correctly portrayed. Ambition describes the siblings and explores the Allen family life in Sunderland and Burlington, their personalities, alliances, conflicts, and their relationships with Indigenous peoples and slavery. It unravels why they are accurately called the founders of Vermont.
According to leading Vermont historians Kevin Graffagnino, Elise Guyette, Gary Shattuck, Michael Bellesilles, former governor James Douglas, and others, this book is a comprehensive study with new information, a deeply researched solid portrayal of their lives with great insights. Buy it at the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum, Bear Pond Books, Hero’s Welcome, Barnes & Noble, The Eloquent Page, Phoenix, and find links and additional research and images on the Ambition Facebook group here: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/19sxnEjw6z/
Buy it here: https://bit.ly/4cApmNq
