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Then Again: American Revolution's 'necessary man' mentored Ethan Allen
https://vtdigger.org/2023/12/03/then-again-thomas-young-the-american-revolutions-necessary-man/Then Again: American Revolution’s ‘necessary man’ mentored Ethan Allen
An anonymous letter circulated in Boston, calling on British troops to “put the above persons immediately to the sword and destroy their houses and plunder their effects.” Young’s name was among 18 listed.
By Mark Bushnell
December 3, 2023, 5:56 am
This is the first in a two-part series on the life of the lesser-known American founder Thomas Young, who played an important role in the formation of Vermont.
Thomas Young is surprisingly unknown in Vermont for someone who gave the state its name, provided the template for its constitution and served as a role model for its most famous founder.
To be fair, he isn’t famous outside the state either. It’s curious that Young doesn’t appear in more histories of the American Revolution, because he had an uncanny knack for being on the scene when things were heating up, and he had the courage to step into the fire. He was a founding member of the Sons of Liberty in New York where he fought against the Stamp Act, was on the streets of Boston calming frightened and enraged townspeople on the night of the famed “massacre” and was the first to publicly propose the protest that became the Boston Tea Party. Many of his friends and comrades, such as Sam Adams and Thomas Paine, are well known. Why not Young?
Historians who do write about Young argue that several factors conspired to keep him in relative obscurity. While most of the founders were wealthy, he was born into a family of meager means; he moved regularly during his lifetime, so no state embraces him as a native son; and he held religious views that made him unpopular with many Christians in his own time, so when the post-Revolution generation embraced a fervent religious revival, his name mostly got left out of the story. He also had the misfortune of dying young.
[...]
An anonymous letter circulated in Boston, calling on British troops to “put the above persons immediately to the sword and destroy their houses and plunder their effects.” Young’s name was among 18 listed.
By Mark Bushnell
December 3, 2023, 5:56 am
This is the first in a two-part series on the life of the lesser-known American founder Thomas Young, who played an important role in the formation of Vermont.
Thomas Young is surprisingly unknown in Vermont for someone who gave the state its name, provided the template for its constitution and served as a role model for its most famous founder.
To be fair, he isn’t famous outside the state either. It’s curious that Young doesn’t appear in more histories of the American Revolution, because he had an uncanny knack for being on the scene when things were heating up, and he had the courage to step into the fire. He was a founding member of the Sons of Liberty in New York where he fought against the Stamp Act, was on the streets of Boston calming frightened and enraged townspeople on the night of the famed “massacre” and was the first to publicly propose the protest that became the Boston Tea Party. Many of his friends and comrades, such as Sam Adams and Thomas Paine, are well known. Why not Young?
Historians who do write about Young argue that several factors conspired to keep him in relative obscurity. While most of the founders were wealthy, he was born into a family of meager means; he moved regularly during his lifetime, so no state embraces him as a native son; and he held religious views that made him unpopular with many Christians in his own time, so when the post-Revolution generation embraced a fervent religious revival, his name mostly got left out of the story. He also had the misfortune of dying young.
[...]