Our tours to Visit the Ethan Allen Homestead are available Thursday through Sunday, during the summer.

We will start our tour with a paddling and safety lesson, before launching our boats.
Then we paddle the river to the Ethan Allen Homestead. We stop there to explore the grounds, visit the museum and tour the homestead.
This is also a good place for our picnic lunch (not provided, bring your favorite lunch).
In the afternoon we return to our boats and paddle back to our launch site.

  Ethan Allan is Vermont's folk hero, with a great many stories told about him.

  He is probably best remembered for his role in capturing Fort Ticonderoga from the British during the beginning of the American Revolution and as one of the primary founders of the State of Vermont.

  He was born January 21, 1738 in Litchfield County, Connecticut. His family moved to Cornwall, Connecticut shortly after his birth, and he grew up on what was at that time the frontier.
  When his father died in 1755, Ethan took over running the farm and taking care of the family.  In 1757 he joined the local militia during the French and Indian War, but his unit did not directly engage in battle that year.
  In 1762 he married Mary Brownson and moved to a farm in Salisbury, Connecticut, where he became partners in an Iron Works. Ethan and Mary were to raise five children together until her death 21 years latter in 1783.
  By 1766 he was living in Northampton, Massachusetts, but was asked to leave by the authorities in 1767 perhaps because of his unruly nature.  He ended up in Sheffield, Massachusetts.
  Governor Benning Wentworth of New Hampshire had been selling grants of land north of Massachusetts and west of the Connecticut River (New Hampshire Grants).  New York was also selling land grants in this area, some of which were the same land that Wentworth had sold.  New York required anyone with a Wentworth grant to pay New York for their land.  The settlers could not pay for the land twice, living on the land but having little money, so they started throwing any New York surveyors out of the area.

  A group of settlers, including Remember Baker and Seth Warner (relatives of Allen), asked Ethan to defend their case before the New York court.  New York refused Wentworth's grants (July 1770). Ethan Returned to Bennington with the news. The Settlers met at Stephan Fay's Tavern (Catamount Tavern) and formed a Committee of Safety and local Militia companies to oppose the threat from New York. They became known as The Green Mountain Boys, perhaps after New York's Lieutenant Governor Cadwallader Colden threatened to drive those boys into the Green Mountains.

  Ethan not only spent his time driving back threats from New York, but also exploring the territory.  In 1772 he and his brothers  Ira, Heman, and Zimri Allen, along with his cousin Remember Baker formed the Onion River Company to buy land around the Winooski River.  In March of 1775, when Daniel Houghton and William French were shot to death in Cumberland County Court House (The Westminster Massacre), Robert Cochran and about 40 of Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys responded to the incident …further uniting the settlers of the east and west sides of the  Green Mountains.

  On April 19, 1775, the British attacked Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts.  In late April 1775 a Connecticut militia planned with Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys to capture Fort Ticonderoga.  On May 7, militia men from Massachusetts and Connecticut joined Allen and the Green Mountain Boys in Castleton and on May 9th, Benedict Arnold showed up with a commission from the Massachusetts Committee of Safety to take command.  He was not well received, but they let him come along at any rate.  On May 10th just before dawn, with only 83 men across the lake, Arnold and Allen decided they must attack before sunrise. They surprised a lone sentry whose flint lock misfired. They ran through the open gates of the Fort and demanded surrender from the sleeping commander, Captain William Delaplace. The fort is captured without a shot being fired.
  In late September of 1775, Allen was captured in a failed attack on Montreal and sent to prison in England.  He was sent back to the colonies and released in a prisoner exchange at Staten Island, New York in May of 1778.  He then reported to General Washington at Valley Forge before returning to Bennington, Vt.  He there learned that Vermont had declared independence in 1777, a constitution had been adopted, and elections held.

  Ethan continued in Vermont politics and appeared before the Continental Congress to seek recognition of Vermont as a State. The Continental Congress would not grant statehood to Vermont, so Ethan and Ira Allen, Governor Thomas Chittenden and others began negotiations with Governor Frederick Haldimand of Quebec about Vermont becoming a British province (The Haldimand Affair). This would provide protection for the settlers of Vermont.

  In 1781 Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia, and in 1783, American independence is recognized at the Treaty of Pairs.

  Ethan's wife Mary died of consumption in June of 1783.  Ethan subsequently met Frances Montresor Brush Buchanan in Westminster early in 1784, and after a fast courtship, married her on February 16, 1784. They moved to Burlington where they lived happily on a farm overlooking the Winooski River.  They had three children: Fanny Margaret, born in 1784, Hannibal, born in 1786, and Ethan Junior, born in 1787.

  In February 1789, Ethan went with one of his workers to get a load of hay from his brother Ebenezer. They stayed the night there and returned home across the ice the next day. Ethan was unconscious when they arrived home and died later that day, February 12, 1789.  He was buried in the Green Mount Cemetery in Burlington, Vermont, with a great many people in attendance.  His wife eventually remarried.

  Two years following his death Vermont was admitted to the Union as the fourteenth state.

  His daughter Fanny (who was 5 when he died) attended Middlebury Seminary and went to Montreal to study French. While there, she had a religious experience and became a sister in the Religious Hospitaliers of Saint Joseph. She spent the rest of her life nursing the sick. She died of consumption in 1819 at the age of 35. The Fanny Allen Hospital in Colchester, Vermont is named after her.

  There is much more to Ethan Allen’s life than we have related in this brief article.  He was deeply involved in the politics of the times and was frequently traveling throughout the area for business as well as political purposes.  There is no known portrait of him, but it is said that he was over six feet tall and of a flamboyant nature.  He was well-read and literate for a frontiersman and had a number of books published.  It is not surprising that his neighbors often chose him as their leader.

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  The Winooski River is the second longest river in the state. A watershed of over a thousand square miles. It flows through the state capital (Montpelier, Vermont) and the largest city in the state (Burlington, Vermont). The Winooski cuts through the heart of the Green Mountains with Mount Mansfield to the north and Camels Hump to the south. Once out of the Green Mountains it then flows through the farmland of the Champlain Valley before reaching the lake named for Samuel de Champlain.

  Long before Champlain visited the lake in 1609 claming the area for France, the Abenaki lived along the lower river. They grew corn, beans and squash here. They also used the river for hunting and fishing.
  The Abenaki call it Winoskitegok (Onion River) because of the wild onions that grow there. Europeans call it Winooski River.
  The Winooski was always used for travel through the mountains to the Connecticut River ((Kwinitegok, Long River), and during the war between the French and English it saw a lot of use.

  The river is home to many birds and wildlife.
With the diverse habitat along the river we see quite a variety of birds; Waterfowl, shore birds, Hawks and Vultures, crows, Ospreys, Kingfishers and song birds of every description.
Beavers, Muskrats and Otters make this river their home. Deer, Moose, Coyotes, Foxes, Raccoons along with many other animals wander along the banks of the river.

Each participant under 16 years old must be accompanied by an adult.

No experience is necessary. Anyone with average upper-body strength can paddle a canoe or kayak.

What you need to bring

Lunch

Bring your favorite lunch for a picnic.

Appropriate outdoor clothing for paddling:

We suggest that you dress in layers. By dressing in layers you can adjust your clothing to stay comfortable throughout the tour.
Extra layers are stored in the boat until you need them.
Light quick-drying trousers or shorts (like a swim suit).
Blue jeans are not recommended because the heavy cotton absorbs a lot of water and they take forever to dry out.
A quick drying shirt.
Fleece or vest for warmth.
Jacket, or windbreaker for your top layer.
A pair of sneakers you don't mind getting wet. Or water shoes.

Sun protection

Hat,
sun glasses,
sun screen.

Other useful items

2 Bottles of water
and or juice to drink
Snacks
Binoculars
Water-proof camera
Insect Repellant

Cost of the tour is $70 per person

Family Discount: $50 per child (12 and under)

$10 Discount per person, for groups of more than six people booked in advance.
(Half day or longer tours only.)

Private tours are also available.

For Reservations
Call 802-897-7500

We recommend that you call well in advance to reserve your tour.
We usually are all out on tours during the day.
Please leave a message and we will call you back as soon as we return.

We will accept you for a tour in the morning if there is room available.
Group size is limited to insure the quality of our trips.
Once the tour is full, you will have to join the next available tour.

We accept personal checks or cash for payment.
At this time we are not set up to take credit cards.

Cancellations

Please call us for cancellations and refunds.

Contact Us

By phone 802-897-7500
Please leave a message. We are usually out guiding a trip.

By E-mail

By Mail

Abenaki Outfitters & Guide Service
P.O. Box 283
Shoreham, VT. 05770-0283

For safety we may limit, postpone or cancel a trip due to severe weather conditions.
All customers must sign a waiver of liability before participating in our outdoor activities.
At some times of the year (usually in the Fall) we are guiding extended trips, in Maine or the Adirondacks.
These paddling, hiking, hunting or fishing trips frequently are in areas where even cell phones will not work.
Therefore we may not be able to reply until we return.

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