The Shot Not Heard ’Round the World: Vermont’s First Taste of Independence

High above the Connecticut River sits a mile-long shelf comfortably nestled within the broad curve of the oxbowing waterway in the fertile eastern valley beneath the rolling foothills of the Green Mountains. It had long attracted inhabitants, but the vagaries of violence had repeatedly forced them out.

The land lies dormant. But enticing. Open. Exposed. Its potential untapped.

Beyond the mountains, out of sight, Albany holds court, too distant to exercise its authority over the outer reaches of its boundary. Closer, on the opposite shore of the river, New Hampshire saw it as an avenue of expansion.

Both colonies claimed it. Neither controlled it.

Yet, into that void, settlers arrived.

The first colonists to settle what would become Westminster, Vermont, came from Massachusetts and Connecticut. On November 19^th, 1736¹, Massachusetts granted “Township Number One” to petitioners from Taunton, Norton, and Easton (Massachusetts) and from Ashford and Killingly (Connecticut).² By July 8, 1740, the Township, familiarly called “New Taunton,” had a sawmill.³

But something more dramatic happened a few months earlier. On March 5, 1740, the “Royal Mess” entered the fray once more, finally settling the northern boundary of Massachusetts.⁴ With the stroke of a pen, the residents in Township Number One suddenly found themselves no longer in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, but the Province of New York.

While the colonial claims were settled, other claims remained. King George’s War (1744-1748) brought the series of wars with the French and various Indian nations outside the Iroquois Confederacy to the Connecticut River. This might explain why New York did not initially begin issuing grants to the land it now officially ruled.

The War also likely led to the abandonment of the Massachusetts effort, as in 1751, when John Averill, together with his wife and son Asa, moved to Number One, only two houses remained. Averill and his family moved into one and shared it with other families that had recently moved there. The other sat unoccupied.⁵

The settlers emigrated from Massachusetts. New York held the authority. But it was New Hampshire Governor Benning Wentworth who seized the advantage.

He first charted a township in New York territory on January 3, 1749. Oddly, it would be the furthest from his province on the western side of the Green Mountains. Its name? Bennington (of course). By April 6, 1754, he had granted fourteen other townships. The fees he collected made him one of the richest men in his province.⁶

On November 9, 1752, he began issuing grants to Number One, rechristening it “Westminster.” Only a few families moved in before the outbreak of the French and Indian War halted further settlement.⁷ Following the war, the population of Westminster grew. By 1766, it had more than fifty families.⁸

They came under New Hampshire titles, paid for their land, and set about improving it. Whatever distant authorities might later claim, the settlers considered the land theirs.

New York did not agree.

The growing presence of New Hampshire Grants in eastern New York did not go unnoticed. As early as 1749, the two colonies began exchanging letters concerning the subject. On April 3, 1750, New York wrote to New Hampshire that “His Excellency do acquaint Governor Wentworth that this Province is bounded Eastward by Connecticut River.”⁹

Wentworth responded on April 25, 1750, in a letter to New York Governor Clinton, that, since both Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut “extended their bounds many miles to the Westward,” New Hampshire “had an equal right to claim the Same extent of Western boundary’s with those Charter Governments.”¹⁰

What began as a dispute on paper was becoming something more.

The settlers continued as they had begun—clearing land, building homes, and treating their New Hampshire titles as valid. Whatever the governors argued, life on the ground moved forward.

Wentworth conveniently left out the fact that the two colonies admitted their trespass and New York ceded the lands to them as a result of a treaty. Governor Clinton was only too kind to remind him of this in a June 6, 1750 letter.¹¹

The dispute widened. Wentworth appealed to the King. New York answered with surveys and counterclaims. Letters crossed the Atlantic. Months turned to years.

By December 28, 1763, New York’s Cadwallader Colden had seen enough.

He issued a proclamation reaffirming that the Provincial border extended to the Connecticut River. He commanded “all judges, justices, and other civil officers” to exercise jurisdiction to the river’s edge and directed the sheriff of Albany County to identify those “who under the Grants of the Government of New Hampshire” continued to occupy the land so they could be prosecuted according to law.¹²

For the first time, the dispute was no longer distant.

Not to be outdone, Governor Wentworth then answered with a proclamation of his own. Issued March 13, 1764, it repeated his earlier claim that New Hampshire’s western boundary should extend as far as that of Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut. In addition, he mentioned that, because of the New Hampshire land grants, “Considerable Revenue is daily arising to the Crown,” and that a ruling favorable to New York would jeopardize that revenue. Lastly, the proclamation encouraged “the Several Grantees claiming under this Government, to be industrious in clearing and cultivating their Lands agreeable to their respective grants.”¹³

Two governments now claimed the same people—and expected obedience from both.

The Court of Saint James finally stepped in. On July 20, 1764, it did “hereby Order and Declare the Western Banks of the River Connecticut, from where it enters the Province of Massachusetts Bay, as far North as the forty-fifth Degree of Northern Latitude, to be the Boundary Line between the said two Provinces of New Hampshire and New York.”¹⁴

On paper, the matter was settled.

On the ground, it was not.

The New Hampshire grantees did not accept the decision. What New York called “rioting,” they called defense.

New York moved to enforce its claim. In 1768, Albany County split the region into Cumberland and Gloucester counties, bringing jurisdiction closer to the inhabitants. The courts then declared the New Hampshire grants null and void. Settlers who wished to remain were required to purchase new charters (a.k.a. “patents”)—this time from New York.¹⁵

Most refused.

They had paid for their land. They had improved it. They would not pay again.

The settlers appealed to New Hampshire, but in 1772 that colony declined to intervene, judging it neither “expedient” nor within its authority.¹⁶ The settlers were left to defend their claims alone—and they knew it.

The dispute intensified.

In 1767, New York briefly suspended proceedings against the grantees.¹⁷ Petitions were sent to the King. Orders were issued. For a moment, it appeared the pressure might ease.¹⁸ The Crown directed New York not to reissue grants to those who had already purchased land under New Hampshire titles.¹⁹

On paper, the settlers had won.

On the ground, they had not.

Cadwallader Colden worked to undo the effect of the order. He claimed many settlers were willing to pay New York to secure their holdings and even offered partial payment in exchange for accommodations. As he put it, they might “pay me such proportion of my fees as they could conveniently do.”²⁰ As late as April 5, 1775, three weeks after the Westminster Massacre, Colden wrote, “It was now therefore out of my Power to comply with his Majestys directions.”²¹

Meanwhile, New York continued issuing competing grants—nearly two million acres between 1767 and 1775, much of it directly contradicting the Crown’s directive.²²

The pressure did not subside. It hardened into resolve.

By 1774, New York abandoned half-measures. The Outlawry Act declared it a capital offense for any New Hampshire grantee to oppose the government by force. At the same time, a reward was offered for the capture of several “turbulent men,” including Ethan Allen and Seth Warner.²³

The lines had been drawn.

New York saw them as squatters.

They saw themselves as rightful owners.

And they were no longer acting alone.

The Green Mountain Boys had emerged to defend the claims of the settlers—and to resist the authority of New York.

Ethan Allen spoke for them:

“We now proclaim to the public, not only for ourselves but the New Hampshire grantees and occupants in general, that the spring and moving cause of our opposition to the government of New York was self-preservation; namely, first, the preservation and maintenance of our property; and, secondly, since that government is so incensed against us, therefore it stands us in hand to defend our lives. For it appears, by a late set of laws passed by the legislature thereof, that the lives and property of the New Hampshire settlers are manifestly struck at. But, that the public may rightly understand the essence of the controversy, we now proclaim to these law-givers, and to the World, that if the New York Patentees will remove their patents, that have been subsequently lapped and laid on the New Hampshire Charters, and quiet us in our possessions, agreeably to his Majesty’s directions, and suspend those criminal prosecutions against us for being rioters, as we are unjustly denominated, then will our settlers be orderly and submissive subjects of Government. But be it known to that despotic fraternity of law-makers and law-breakers, that we will not be fooled nor frightened out of our property.”²⁴

Words had been spoken. Lines had been drawn. Now they would be tested.

By 1771, Westminster had become the most populous town in eastern New York. The provincial government of New York confirmed the charter of Westminster on March 16, 1772.²⁵

The conflict could no longer be contained in proclamations and petitions. By 1775, a confluence of events reached the tipping point. The New Hampshire Grantees, led by Azariah Wright, accompanied by his “Liberty men,” sought to prevent the New York judge from holding court in Westminster.²⁶

The official New York provincial records say the sheriff ordered his deputies to fire through the courthouse door as a warning, but not to harm those occupying the building. Those same records say Wright’s men fired back—only then did the Sheriff’s men fire their fatal volley.²⁷ These reports made it into newspapers favorable to the government.²⁸

Eyewitness reports, on the other hand, tell a different story. Wright’s grandson said his father – who at the age of 12 or 13 attended William French’s funeral – told him “There were no arms carried by the liberty party, except clubs which were obtained by the Rockingham Company at my grandfather’s wood-pile.” These eyewitnesses say the Sheriff and his posse shot indiscriminately and that “The liberty men had no guns when they first came, but after French was killed, they went home and got them.”²⁹

In the aftermath, the Green Mountain Boys, led by Robert Cockran, arrived in Westminster on March 15, loudly threatening to seize any man who sided with the sheriff.³⁰ The court decided to adjourn until June.³¹ In fact, it never met again. New York authority effectively ended in Westminster.

On April 11, with Ethan Allen present, a large committee of people met at Westminster. Among other measures, it passed the following resolution:

“That it is the duty of the inhabitants wholly to renounce and resist the administration of the government of New York, until such time, as their lives and property can be secured by it; or until they can have opportunity to lay their grievances before the king, with a petition to be annexed to some other government, or erected into a new one, as may appear best for the inhabitants.”³²

What began at Westminster did not end there. It turns out, Westminster didn’t need the King. In fact, the movement expanded to all towns derived from the New Hampshire Grants. It came to a head on January 15, 1777, in the very same courthouse where William French lost his life. On that day, the grantees declared their independence. After so much time fighting for the land, neither New York nor New Hampshire won. The people won. They called themselves “New Connecticut.”³³ After discovering the name was already in use elsewhere (by Connecticut settlers in northeast Pennsylvania in yet another land dispute), “New Connecticut” officially became “Vermont” at the June 4, 1777, convention held in Windsor.³⁴

Vermont may have called itself a new republic, but New York wasn’t ready to let go. First, it had a more pressing matter.

A month after the Westminster Massacre, Lexington and Concord became the “shot heard ’round the world” that set off the American Revolution. With that, the story of William French, Westminster, and the struggle for Vermont’s independence—the shot not heard ’round the world—faded from view, its meaning overshadowed by the larger struggle now unfolding.

Unseen. Unheard. Unresolved.

The forces that produced it did not disappear. They spread.

What had begun as a contest between colonies would soon draw in the Indian nations, fracture old alliances, and carry the war far beyond courthouse walls and contested charters.

Further west, beyond the mountains and deeper into New York’s backcountry, the conflict would take on a far more brutal form—no longer argued in refined courts, but settled on the raw frontier.

¹ Hall, Benjamin H., History of Eastern Vermont, From Its Earliest Settlement to the Close of the Eighteenth Century, D. Appleton & Co., NY, 1858, p. 738.
² Ibid., p. 58.
³ Ibid., p. 59.
⁴ Ibid., p. 60.
⁵ Ibid., p. 61.
⁶ Ibid., p. 93.
⁷ Ibid., p. 61.
⁸ Ibid., p. 94.
⁹ O’Callaghan, E.B., The Documentary History of the State of New York, Vol. IV, Charles Van Benthuysen., Albany, 1851, p. 332.
¹⁰ Ibid.
¹¹ Ibid., p. 333.
¹² Ibid., p. 347
¹³ Ibid., pp. 353-354.
¹⁴ Ibid., p. 355.
¹⁵ Barber, John W., and Howe, Henry, Historical collections of the state of New York, S. Tuttle, New York, 1842, p. 32.
¹⁶ O’Callaghan, p. 460.
¹⁷ Ibid., p. 364.
¹⁸ Ibid., p. 365.
¹⁹ Ibid., p. 377.
²⁰ Ibid., p. 382.
²¹ Broadhead, John Romeyn, Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York V8, E.B. O’Callaghan, ed, Weed, Parsons & Co, 1857, p. 567.
²² Collins, Edward Day, History of Vermont, Ginn & Company, Boston, 1903, p. 296.
²³ A History of the State of New York, E. Bliss, 1828, p. 111.
²⁴ Niles, Grace Greylock, The Hoosac Valley, by The Knickerbocker Press, NY & London, 1912, pp. 289-290.
²⁵ Hall, p. 94.
²⁶ Ibid, p. 752.
²⁷ O’Callaghan, pp. 544-548.
²⁸ Hall, p. 232.
²⁹ Ibid., p. 233.
³⁰ Ibid., p. 226.
³¹ Moore, Frank, Diary of the American Revolution-Volume 1, by Charles Scribner, NY, 1860, p. 51.
³² Bliss, p. 113.
³³ Hall, p. 283.
³⁴ O’Callaghan, p. 567.