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.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.