‘A difficult Founding Father to love’: New biography explores ‘nuanced’ life of Ira Allen

Practically every Vermonter knows of Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen.

Far fewer are likely familiar with Ethan’s youngest brother and one of Vermont’s founders, Ira Allen – the cunning and widely unpopular land speculator, politician, negotiator and pamphleteer.

Earlier this month, local historian Kevin Graffagnino, 69, published what he says is the first book in nearly 100 years, and the second one ever, to focus primarily on the life of the underappreciated revolutionary.

“If you want to write about early Vermont, you’ve got to put him in the picture,” Graffagnino said, adding that without understanding fully who Ira was and what he contributed to the brave little state, “you’ve got a very incomplete tapestry.”

Ira Allen: ‘Nuanced, not always good’

Graffagnino originally wrote “Ira Allen: A Biography” 31 years ago as his doctoral dissertation at the University of Massachusetts while working in University of Vermont Special Collections, where he gathered the majority of his research.

Graffagnino’s new biography fills a literary and academic gap on Ira, who is mostly reduced to a minor character in books about Vermont’s early history.

Ira’s only other biography, written in the 1920s, is verbose and “almost unreadable,” Graffagnino said, and worst of all, an overly flattering portrayal of the morally gray man. In contrast, “Ira Allen: A Biography” offers a more succinct, objective account of Ira’s life.

“He’s nuanced, he’s not always good,” Graffagnino said. “He can usually find a way to advance the public with his own ambition, but if it comes down to a real pinch where you can only get one of them, then Ira will seldom do the heroic thing. If one of the horses is going to drop dead, it’s going to be the one for the public.”

Why has it taken so long for a proper Ira Allen biography?

It’s quite simple: Ira is a “difficult Founding Father to love,” Graffagnino asserts in his book about his subject who was once the richest man in the Champlain Valley.

For one thing, Ira does not fit the American ideal of a Revolutionary War hero like his brawny and bold brother Ethan. In contrast, Ira acquired the nickname “Stub” for his short stature and “couldn’t beat anyone up,” Graffagnino said, instead having to resort to less romantic means to accomplish his goals.

“He has to persuade, he has to make backroom deals, he has to outsmart you,” Graffagnino said.

Ira’s crafty ways – he wasn’t above tricking someone into giving away their valuable land – also didn’t “evoke a lot of affection” while he was alive.  

“He’s a practical guy,” Graffagnino said of Ira. “His loyalties and affiliations are determined often, not always 100%, by what’s good for him financially.”

If Ethan was Vermont’s Davy Crocket, Ira was the state’s Aaron Burr, a important American figure who was “driven, brilliant at times” and “distrusted” by most of his peers, Graffagnino said in his book.

“I don’t particularly like him,” said Graffagnino. “But I respect him and he’s important” to understanding 18th-century America.

Is Ira Allen buried in Vermont?

Ira Allen died penniless, irrelevant and alone in 1812 at age 64 in Philadelphia where he fled 10 years prior to avoid paying his debts. Unlike Ethan and many other revolutionary giants who secured extravagant gravesites and burials, Ira’s body was buried in a pauper’s grave at the Free Quaker Burial Ground in Philadelphia.

A few years later, he and the cemetery’s other occupants were dug up and deposited under a tree in Audubon, Pennsylvania. A marker designating the spot as Ira’s final resting place was erected in the 1990s, a project Graffagnino helped complete. Twenty years ago, Vermont lawmakers determined it would be too costly to identify and retrieve his bones from the pile.

However, Ira does have a cenotaph located in Burlington’s Greenmount Cemetery right next to the Ethan Allen Monument.

Megan Stewart is a government accountability reporter for the Burlington Free Press. Contact her at mstewartyounger@gannett.com.