Colchester, Vermont: Where the Allens Began
Near Burlington, Vermont
Colchester was chartered June seventh, seventeen sixty-three, to Edward Burling and sixty-six associates, and named for the Earl of Colchester. But its real founding story belongs to a family of brothers. Ethan Allen and his brother Ira Allen, along with their cousin Remember Baker, were among the first European settlers here in the early seventeen seventies. Ira Allen served as the town's first clerk.
The Allens used Colchester as a base for the Onion River Land Company, buying and speculating on land throughout the region that would become Vermont. Ethan would go on to seize Fort Ticonderoga in seventeen seventy-five; Ira would help draft the Vermont constitution. In eighteen ninety-two the Army established Fort Ethan Allen on the town's outskirts, a cavalry post that operated into the twentieth century. Today Colchester, with roughly seventeen thousand residents, is Vermont's largest town.
