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United States of America – Commemorative Half Dollar
Vermont Sesquicentennial – 150th anniversary of the Battle of Bennington and the independence of Vermont
1927 Silver 50 Cents (Half Dollar) 30.6mm (12.50 grams) 0.900 Silver (0.3617 oz. ASW) Philadelphia mint
Reference: KM# 162 | Engraver: Charles Keck
Certification: PCGS MS 64 9401.64/36769595 | Mintage: 28,142
UNITED·STATES·OF·AMERICA IRA ALLEN FOUNDER OF VERMONT, Ira Allen, the founder of Vermont and one of the Green Mountain Boys, who would defeat the British at the Battle of Bennington.
BATTLE OF BENNINGTON IN GOD WE TRUST 1777-1927 AUG. 16 CK E·PLURIBUS UNUM HALF DOLLAR, Catamount or cat o’ mountain standing left.
This coin was issued to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Bennington and the independence of Vermont which occurred in 1777. It was not until 1791 that Vermont would join the Union as a state.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.
 Ira Allen (April 21, 1751 in – January 7, 1814) was one of the founders of the U.S. state of Vermont and a leader of the Green Mountain Boys during the American colonial period. He was the younger brother of Ethan Allen.
Ira Allen was born in Cornwall in the Connecticut Colony (in present-day Litchfield County, Connecticut), the youngest of six sons born to Joseph and Mary Baker Allen. In 1771, Allen went to Vermont (then part of the British colonial Province of New York) with his brother Ethan as a surveyor for the Onion River Land Company. The Allen brothers established the company in order to purchase lands under the New Hampshire Grants. Through this, Ira Allen became involved in a dispute with the Province of New York over conflicting land claims in the region.
During the American Revolutionary War, Allen was a leading figure in the declaration of the Vermont Republic in 1777, which was originally intended to be independent of both the British colonies and the newly founded United States. Late in the war, he and his brother Ethan, along with Thomas Chittenden and others, were involved in the Haldimand Affair by their discussions with Frederick Haldimand, the British Governor of the Province of Quebec, about the possibility of reinstating Vermont as a British province. An alternate explanation is that the Allen brothers were not actually interested in returning Vermont to the British but merely used the Haldimand negotiations to both stave off a British invasion of Vermont from Canada and prod the Continental Congress into recognizing Vermont as separate from New York and New Hampshire and admitting it to the United States.[citation needed] Vermont was granted statehood in 1791.
Allen designed the Great Seal of Vermont. Over two days at Windsor in 1778, Allen drew the seal and Reuben Dean, a local silversmith, made it. The two men were each paid ten shillings for their work.
In 1780, Allen presented to the state legislature a memorial for the establishment of the University of Vermont. He contributed money and a fifty-acre (20 ha) site at Burlington. He was called the “Metternich of Vermont” and the “Father of the University of Vermont”. Ira Allen pledged 4,000 British pounds sterling to the University of Vermont, but never donated the money. In response, the Trustees of the University of Vermont secured a Writ of Attachment on his title to the town of Plainfield to try to extract payment of his original 4,000-pound pledge.
Allen was Vermont’s first Treasurer and held office from 1778 to 1786, when he was succeeded by Samuel Mattocks. He also served as the first Surveyor General of Vermont from 1779 to 1787. In 1789, Allen married Jerusha Enos, the daughter of Roger Enos and Jerusha Hayden Enos. Members of the Allen and Enos families were the original proprietors of Irasburg, Vermont, which was named after Ira Allen. Allen subsequently acquired all the proprietary rights to Irasburg and deeded the town to Jerusha Enos as a wedding gift. Allen also owned undeveloped land, including a stake in Barton, Vermont.[citation needed]
On October 25, 1790, Ira Allen was commissioned Major General of the Third Division of the Vermont State Militia by Governor Thomas Chittenden. He went to France in 1795 and sought French army intervention for seizing Canada in order to create an independent republic called United Columbia. He bought 20,000 muskets and 24 cannons but was captured at sea, taken to England, placed on trial, and charged with furnishing arms for Irish rebels. He was acquitted after a lawsuit which lasted eight years.
Allen died in Philadelphia, where he had gone to escape imprisonment for debt. He was originally buried in Philadelphia’s Arch Street Presbyterian Cemetery, but his remains were lost when that site was destroyed. There is a cenotaph in his memory at Wetherills Cemetery in Audubon, Pennsylvania, and another at Greenmount Cemetery in Burlington, Vermont. The Ira Allen Chapel on the University of Vermont’s main campus was also named after him.
The Battle of Bennington was a battle of the American Revolutionary War, part of the Saratoga campaign, that took place on August 16, 1777, in Walloomsac, New York, about 10 miles (16 km) from its namesake Bennington, Vermont. A rebel force of 2,000 men, primarily New Hampshire and Massachusetts militiamen, led by General John Stark, and reinforced by Vermont militiamen led by Colonel Seth Warner and members of the Green Mountain Boys, decisively defeated a detachment of General John Burgoyne’s army led by Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Baum, and supported by additional men under Lieutenant Colonel Heinrich von Breymann.
Baum’s detachment was a mixed force of 700 composed primarily of Hessians but also including small numbers of dismounted Brunswick dragoons, Canadians, Loyalists, and Indians. He was sent by Burgoyne to raid Bennington in the disputed New Hampshire Grants area for horses, draft animals, provisions, and other supplies. Believing the town to be only lightly defended, Burgoyne and Baum were unaware that Stark and 1,500 militiamen were stationed there. After a rain-caused standoff, Stark’s men enveloped Baum’s position, taking many prisoners, and killing Baum. Reinforcements for both sides arrived as Stark and his men were mopping up, and the battle restarted, with Warner and Stark driving away Breymann’s reinforcements with heavy casualties.
The battle was a major strategic success for the American cause and considered the turning point of the Revolutionary War; it reduced Burgoyne’s army in size by almost 1,000 men, led his Native-American support to largely abandon him, and deprived him of much-needed supplies, such as mounts for his cavalry regiments, draft animals and provisions; all factors that contributed to Burgoyne’s eventual defeat at Saratoga. The victory galvanized colonial support for the independence movement, and played a key role in bringing France into the war on the rebel side. The battle’s anniversary is celebrated in the state of Vermont as Bennington Battle Day.
The Green Mountain Boys was a militia organization first established in the late 1760s in the territory between the British provinces of New York and New Hampshire, known as the New Hampshire Grants and later in 1775 as the Vermont Republic (which later became the state of Vermont). Headed by Ethan Allen and members of his extended family, it was instrumental in resisting New York’s attempts to control the territory, over which it had won de jure control in a territorial dispute with New Hampshire.
Some companies served in the American Revolutionary War, including notably when the Green Mountain Boys led by Ethan Allen captured Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain on May 10, 1775; and invaded Canada later in 1775. In early June 1775, Ethan Allen and his then subordinate, Seth Warner, induced the Continental Congress at Philadelphia to create a Continental Army ranger regiment from the then New Hampshire Grants. Having no treasury, the Congress directed that New York’s revolutionary Congress pay for the newly authorized regiment. In July 1775, Allen’s militia was granted support from the New York revolutionary Congress.
The Green Mountain Boys disbanded more than a year before Vermont declared its independence in 1777 from Great Britain “as a separate, free and independent jurisdiction or state”. The Vermont Republic operated for 14 years, before being admitted in 1791 to the United States as the 14th state.
The remnants of the Green Mountain Boys militia were largely reconstituted as the Green Mountain Continental Rangers. Command of the newly formed regiment passed from Allen to Seth Warner. Allen joined the staff of the Northern Army of New York’s Major General Philip Schuyler and was given the rank of lieutenant colonel. Under Warner the regiment fought at the battles of Hubbardton and Bennington in 1777. The regiment was disbanded in 1779.
The Green Mountain Boys mustered again during the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan war and the Iraq War. Today it is the informal name of the Vermont National Guard, which comprises both the Army and Air National Guards.
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