Ira Allen was born in
Cornwall in the
Connecticut Colony (in present-day
Litchfield County,
Connecticut), the youngest of eight children 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 four Allen brothers established the company in 1772 (dissolved 1785) to purchase lands under the
New Hampshire Grants. Ira Allen had an almost central role in the dispute with the Province of New York over conflicting land claims in the region such as by gifting land to men who had committed acts for New Hampshire, and by confiscating loyalist property to finance government. During the
American Revolutionary War, Allen was a member of the
Vermont Legislature in 1776–1777 and 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 stave off a British invasion of Vermont from
Canada and to prod the
Continental Congress into recognizing Vermont as separate from New York and New Hampshire and admitting it to the United States. Vermont was
granted statehood in 1791. Allen designed the
Great Seal of Vermont. 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. campus in
Burlington 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 "Father of the University of Vermont” and after his death he has been referred to as the "Metternich of Vermont" (though his actions predate those of Metternich himself). 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 married Jerusha Enos (daughter of Roger Enos and Jerusha Hayden) in 1789. 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. at the University of Vermont 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, and which saw a first of an Admiralty judge being summoned before King's Bench. Allen died in 1814 in
Philadelphia, where he had gone to escape imprisonment for debt, caused by his long absence from Vermont. He was originally buried in Philadelphia's Arch Street Presbyterian Cemetery, but his remains were lost when that cemetery was destroyed. There is a
cenotaph in his memory at Greenmount Cemetery in
Burlington, Vermont, and a memorial cenotaph at Wetherill’s (Free Quaker) Cemetery in
Audubon, Pennsylvania. The
Ira Allen Chapel on the University of Vermont's main campus was also named after him. ==Vermont Sesquicentennial half dollar==