I started writing these “250 Years Ago” essay in May of 2024, and there were some rough weeks when I was reduced to writing about the birth or death of some marginally well-know person or presenting a selection of articles from the Virginia Gazette in a given week. However, things are heating up after Lexington and Concord in the middle of April; I think I’ll have plenty to write about each week throughout the rest of 2025 and into 2026 and beyond.
I have to admit – I didn’t know much about the capture of Ft. Ticonderoga before I began researching for this essay. Identified as the first offensive victory for American forces in the Revolutionary War, it secured the strategic passageway north to Canada and allowed the patriots to seize a cache of artillery.
Here’s a little context (from the American Battlefield Trust website):
Because Fort Ticonderoga controlled access north and south between Albany and Montreal, it was a critical battlefield of the French and Indian War. The battle between French and British troops in this location on July 8, 1758, was one of the largest battles of this conflict and was the bloodiest battle fought in North America until the Civil War. The fort was finally captured by the British in 1759.
Although several engagements were fought at the fort during the Revolution, the most famous of these occurred on May 10, 1775, when Ethan Allen and his band of Green Mountain Boys, accompanied by Benedict Arnold, silently rowed across Lake Champlain from present-day Vermont and stormed the fort in a sneak attack.
The partnership between Arnold and Allen was uneasy at best. Arnold had persuaded the Massachusetts provisional government to give him a commission to command a secret mission to capture the fort, but Arnold soon learned that Ethan Allen and his followers were already on their way to Ticonderoga with the same intention. Arnold thinks Allen and his men should command the expedition, but he soon realizes that Allen’s men are unlikely to follow anyone but Allen.
A few months later, General Washington sent Henry Knox to gather the artillery left at Ticonderoga and transport it to Boston. The guns were mounted on Dorchester Heights, overlooking Boston, and were used to force the British to evacuate the city of Boston in March of 1776.
The battle itself was anticlimactic. Only 1312 men were engaged in the battle -- 83 on the American side and 48 on the British side – and no one was killed. Allen’s men celebrated their victory by plundering the premises for liquor and then getting drunk. Arnold insisted that order be restored, but the Green Mountain Boys paid little attention and they eventually leave. Arnold remained until he was relieved of command in June, when 1,000 soldiers from Connecticut arrive to reinforce the fort. They brought with them a General who held a commission from Congress, superseding Arnold’s commission from Massachusetts. Arnold didn’t take this well; he resigned his commission, beginning the long story of his disgruntled relations with Congress and the Continental Army.
Fort Ticonderoga remained in American hands until the British Army under the command of General John Burgoyne recaptured it during the Saratoga campaign of 1777. When Burgoyne’s engineers haled their cannons to the top of nearby Mount Defiance and aim them at Fort Ticonderoga, the American garrison abandoned the fort without a fight on July 5, 1777. After Burgoyne was defeated at Saratoga in October of 1777, the fort no longer played a major role in the war.
I particularly enjoyed learning about this battle because my 6th great-grandfather, Philip Henry Perry, was a Green Mountain Boy. Here’s what I wrote about Philip and his service with this militia unit:
Between 1700 and 1763, England and France fought many times over dominance in the world; this included skirmishes between the two colonial powers in North America. The most significant of these skirmishes evolved into the French and Indian War (known in other parts of the world as the Seven Years War). After being defeated in 1763 in the Seven Years' War, France ceded its territory east of the Mississippi River to Great Britain. At this time, the population of Vermont was about 2,000 people. Although outright ownership of Vermont was not settled at this time, it was being settled by people from both the British and French colonies.
In the first years of the settlement of Vermont, control over land was held by Massachusetts. After 1740, however, control fell to New Hampshire. Beginning with grants of land to the new town of Bennington in 1749, control over this land was given to New Hampshire. At the same time, however, Governor Clinton of New York claimed land from New York east to the Connecticut River – which means that no one agreed about who controlled Vermont. At this point, the land that came to be called Vermont was known as the New Hampshire grants.
Throughout the 1760s this dispute over land ownership continued. In 1667, a group calling themselves the Green Mountain Boys formed to protect the claimants to the New Hampshire grants from the encroachments of the government of New York. New York had sold land grants to settlers in the region, but these grants conflicted with earlier grants from New Hampshire. The Green Mountain Boys, a local militia, protected the interests of the established New Hampshire land grant settlers against the newly arrived settlers with land titles granted by New York.
The Green Mountain Boys were led by Ethan Allen and Seth Warner, both of whom would achieve later renown during the American Revolution. Another leader, Remember Baker, was known to be of impetuous character, and led violent reprisals against New York interlopers. In 1774, a group of Green Mountain Boys called the “Bennington Mob,” under the leadership of Allen and Warner, undertook lawless methods to combat the New Yorkers. Parallel to these activities, the movement throughout the colonies toward rebellion and independence cast the Green Mountain Boys on the side of the rebels and the New Yorkers on the side of England.
Philip Henry Perry had moved with his family to Vermont in 1772 and was a member of the Green Mountain Boys — and specifically of the Bennington Mob — by 1773.
One book, The Historical Origins of Terrorism in America by Robert Kumamoto, documents the actions of the Green Mountain Boys. After describing the attacks by the Green Mountain Boys on various notables in the region of Bennington, VT, Kumamoto tells the story of Jacob Marsh, a judge with ties to New York, who was seized, “tried” by the Green Mountain Boys, and was forced to watch his house be burned to the ground by the Green Mountain Boys. Philip Perry was identified as the individual who had held the judge captive at gunpoint until a larger group of Green Mountain Boys could arrive.
Philip died on August 1, 1775, at the age of 32, as the result of an encounter with a Tory spy, Hazard Wilcox, in Bennington County. This was a particularly tragic event; Philip and Hazard were apparently neighbors and friends, and they were also probably distant cousins. The names are too significant – a couple of decades later the War of 1812 military hero, Oliver Hazard Perry, would prevail over the British in the Battle of Lake Erie. He bears the names Hazard and Perry, reflecting a marriage between these two families some generations back. I haven’t been able to clarify that relationship yet, but I know it’s there.
There is yet more to this story. Sometime around 1910, another descendant of Philip and Lydia – William C. Brown – facilitated the creation of a plaque to be placed in the train station in Arlington, Vermont (north of Shaftsbury in Bennington County). William’s family had moved west from Vermont in the 19th century; he was born in Iowa, and came back to Vermont only when he became a railroad executive with authority over the rail line that served Bennington County.
This is what the plaque looks like: (I’ve provided a transcription of the plaque under the picture):

Here’s a transcription:
The remarkable thing about this plaque is that it honors two of my 6th great-grandfathers, Parley Brown (1738-1775) and Philip. Yes, William C. Brown, the man who commissioned and erected this plaque more than 100 years ago, is my distant cousin – probably something like first cousin 5x removed or thereabouts. Parley’s son Nathaniel would marry Phillip’s daughter Anna in Vermont in 1790. Their son, my 5th great-grandfather Philip Perry Brown (1790-1876), was born in Vermont before the family moved to New York in the next generation. I’m descended from Philip Perry Brown’s oldest son Harley Brown (1810-1863), and Cousin William is descended from Philip’s second son Charles E. Brown (1813-1901). (I do have problems with Harley – he is difficult to pin down. He may or may not actually exist, which renders this analysis moot but still fun.)
Just a note about the “view from this site toward the west” being the basis of the Vermont State Seal. Here’s the original seal:
Here’s what the website https://www.netstate.com/states/symb/seals/vt_seal.htm had to say about the seal:
“The design was a circle, bordered on the top and bottom by wavy lines suggesting sky and water. A sheaf of wheat stands in each quadrant of the circle. A cow, of course, stands as a cow does, and Vermont had its share of cows. The rolling hills and forests of Vermont's landscape are depicted across the center of the circle. A lone pine stands at the top center of the scene. Across the lower half of the circle are the words ‘Vermont Freedom & Unity’.”
I particularly like the phrase “A cow, of course, stands as a cow does, and Vermont had its share of cows.” I also have questions about whether this was actually the view Governor Chittenden had from his window. Cows may stand, but I doubt that they fly.
I found this little YouTube gem to give you an overview of the battles of the American Revolution in about 18 minutes. If this is not a live link, google the name of the video on YouTube and you’ll find it.