V Lake Memphremagog, from Newport. THE STATE OF VERMONT. By Albert Clarke. ERMONT is the only state in the American Union which was never a province of a foreign government or a part of another state or a territory of the United States. As the late Governor Hall said, in his "Early History of Vermont," the state "struggled into existence through a double revolution." Parts of her territory were claimed by Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New York, and the whole was menaced by Great Britain from Canada and Lake Champlain ; but through all the contention, which lasted twenty-five years, the settlers maintained a degree of independence which historians agree in considering remarkable in the circumstance, sand which finally won recognition from every claimant, and admission of the state to the Union on the fourth day of March, 1791. Vermont was thus the first state to join the original thirteen. The first white men to view the land were Samuel de Champlain, governor of Quebec, and two companions, who, with a band of Algonquin Indians, pushed up the Richelieu River in canoes on the 4th of July, 1609, and entered the lake which has ever since borne the explorer's name. He appropriately named the country on the east "Verd Mont," but the early settlers knew nothing of this and the name was never applied to that domain until April 11, 1777, when Dr. Thomas Young, a distinguished citizen of Philadelphia, addressed a letter "to the inhabitants of Vermont, a free and independent state, bounding on the river Connecticut and Lake Champlain." The convention which had met at Westminster on the 15th of the previous January, had voted that "the district of territory comprehending and usually known by the name and description of the New Hampshire Grants, of right ought to be, and is hereby declared for ever hereafter to be considered as a separate, free and independent jurisdiction or state, by the name, and forever hereafter to be called, known, and distinguished by the name of New Connecticut." Many of the settlers and most of their leaders and there never has been a moment since when any of its people would have preferred any other name. The first occupancy of the region by civilized man was in 1665, when the French constructed Fort St. Ann, on Isle La Motte, in the north end of Lake Champlain. This settlement was not permanent, and some historians have contended that it was only a military possession; but the fort was used as late as the close of the French-Indian war in 1760, and the . late Hon. Ira Hill, who was born in 1793 and went with his father to Isle La Motte in 1803, said there were numerous indications that the land in the vicinity of the fort had been occupied and cultivated long before the permanent settlement of the island was begun in 1788. In 1690 a small stone fort was built by the French at Chimney Point, in the town of Addison, some sixty miles Hon. Redfield Proctor. had emigrated from Connecticut, hence the name; but when their commissioners returned from the Congress at Philadelphia, bearing Dr. Young's letter and the intelligence that a settlement along the Susquehanna was also called New Connecticut, the adjourned convention, held at Windsor, June 4, unanimously resolved that the district should " ever hereafter be called and known by the name of Vermont." And so it has been, first permanent white settlement in the state was around a block house called Fort Dummer, built in 1724 by the province of Massachusetts in what is now the town of Brattleboro. The loss of sixtyfour years from the antiquity of the state was thus more than compensated by the superior qualities of the settlers who finally poured in from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. In 1741, Benning Wentworth was appointed by King George II. governor of New Hampshire, and his commission declared his province to extend westerly "until it should meet his majesty's other governments." It was generally under Bennington, in the southwest corner of the state, and during the next fifteen years granted about one hundred and thirty other towns. In 1764, without notice to the inhabitants, King George III., by an order in council for better defining the boundaries, extended the government of New York as far east as the Connecticut river. This transferred the whole territory of Vermont to New York. The settlers did not like it, but probably they would have acquiesced if the government of New York had not required them to take out new titles to their lands, at a heavy expense. Against this they successfully appealed to the king in council, and in 1767 the Governor of New York was FROM A DRAWING BY MRS. Z. D. L. STEELE. Mount Killington and other Mountains east of Rutland. commanded, "upon pain of his majesty's highest displeasure," to cease making grants of the controverted lands. But, under grants already made, judgments of ejectment were given against the settlers by the colonial court in New York, and after the trial of a test case the attorney-general advised Ethan Allen to return and pacify his people, for their cause was hopeless. Allen replied: "The gods of the valleys are not the gods of the hills;" and when eviction was attempted, the settlers offered armed resistance. On the 18th of July, 1771, Sheriff Ten Eyck and a posse of three hundred marched from Albany to eject James Breakenridge from his farm in Bennington. They found the place thoroughly defended, and most of the posse refused to attack. The sheriff seized an axe to break in the door of the house, but was surrounded by levelled muskets and compelled to retire. "And here," says the late Governor Hiland Hall, in his "Early History of Vermont," "on the farm of James Breakenridge, was born the future state of Vermont." During the next four years there was continuous but bloodless war, chiefly west of the mountain range that extends through the centre of the state from south to north. Committees of safety, and companies of volunteers calling themselves "Green Mountain Boys" were organized in several towns, and a "grand committee "of delegates met often and provided for the general welfare. Rewards were offered in New York for the arrest of the leaders of what was styled "the mob," and on the night of March 21, 1772, Remember Baker was seized, after being wounded in his house at East Arlington, and hurried towards Albany. The news flew to Bennington, where ten men rallied and rode with all speed to the present site of Troy. Finding that the raiders had not passed, they turned towards Arlington and met them. The captors scattered and Baker was borne tenderly home. This affair prepared the settlers for any degree of resistance, and three weeks later, when they heard that Gov. Tryon was marching towards them with a force of British regulars, they obtained artillery from the old fort at Williamstown, Mass., and made other preparations for vigorous defence. The force, however, did not appear. It became dangerous to hold a New York title to lands, or to speak in favor of the New York jurisdiction. The Green Mountain boys organized temporary courts for each case, and tried and punished offenders on the spot. In one instance they took the roof from a claimant's house, to show him that he could not be sheltered by a New York title, but restored it after he had agreed to accept |