Green Mountain Boys

Green Mountain Boys popular name of armed bands formed (c.1770) under the auspices of Ethan Allen in the Green Mountains of what is today Vermont. Their purpose was to prevent the New Hampshire Grants , as Vermont was then known, from becoming part of New York, to which it had been awarded by the British. Land speculators, such as Allen and his brothers, and settlers banded together in armed groups to defend their lands. Their methods were threat, intimidation, and actual violence against the New Yorkers, and they managed to keep the region free from New York control, establishing (1777) instead a separate government that ultimately achieved (1791) statehood for Vermont. In the American Revolution the Green Mountain Boys figured prominently in 1775, when, under Allen's leadership, they captured Ticonderoga. In 1777 Seth Warner and John Stark led them to victory at Bennington—one of the notable achievements of the revolutionaries in the Saratoga campaign.

Green Mountain Boys an army organized in Vermont by Ethan Allen in 1770, originally to oppose territorial expansion from New York and subsequently influential in the Revolutionary War, especially in taking Fort Ticonderoga.

Green Mountain Boys, irregular militia led by Ethan Allen, originally organized to defend the New Hampshire Grants of Vermont against the interference of New York land‐jobbers. Later the Vermonters were prominent in the Revolution as captors of Fort Ticonderoga. D.P. Thompson's romance and works by Rowland Robinson celebrate their deeds. Vermont is popularly called the Green Mountain state.