 |
|
Stephen Fay ... whose tavern was so important ... who himself played a part in the events in and around Bennington ... whose children helped shaped the course of the future...
|
The official site for Bennington, Vermont, refers to the Catamount Tavern, started by Stephen Fay and known as Fay's House, as "the virtual capital of Vermont in the early decades, certainly the focal point for the 14-year Independent Republic of Vermont (1777-1791)." [Bennington History]
|
 |
The original tavern burned down, but there is a monument to it, marked by... a catamount, of course.
|
|
| |
|
It is not only the place of the tavern in the history of public houses that makes it important; it is also the use it saw during the events leading up to the Battle of Bennington and the Battle of Fort Ticondaroga. Consider for example:
|
"In the early 1760s both New Hampshire and New York had claimed jurisdiction over the land between the Connecticut and Hudson rivers. After an appeal to
London met with a decision favorable to New York in 1764, that colony tried to force settlers with New Hampshire titles to pay for their land a second time. The
New Hampshire claimants sought legal aid, but, when a New York judge ruled against them, they met at Stephen Fay's Catamount Tavern in Bennington and formed
the Green Mountain Boys to keep Yorker surveyors, sheriffs, and settlers off their land. Ethan Allen, the leader of these Vermont vigilantes, confidently announced,
'The Gods of the hills are not the Gods of the valleys.' Holders of New Hampshire titles viewed Allen and his followers as the local version of Robin Hood and his
merry men. New York authorities vilified them as 'the Bennington Mob.' Frederick Haldimand, the Governor-General of Canada with whom Allen later negotiated
for the future of Vermont, described the Green Mountain Boys as a 'collection of the most abandoned wretches that ever lived.'"
From THE BEST OF ETHAN ALLEN, Edited And With An Introduction By John W. Krueger - an out of print book, brought online by Chalidze Publications.
|
| | |
|
Many things have been written about Stephen Fay. Below, an informative sheet from the Bennington Museum; elsewhere on this site is the biographical material included in Orlin.
|
|
Jonas, like his father, has had his full share of biographical notice, from the material in Orlin to the biography below.
The other Fays mentioned above and below appear in other places on this site. |
Jonas Fay
 |
| From Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Six volumes. Edited by James Grant Wilson and John Fiske. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1888-1889, Vol II, 1888, page 423. |
|
|
