I was on my way with my new movie “Lost Nation” since July 10 and will review it in the center of Waterbury on March 1 and 2. So far we have played 53 dates – and I plan to continue to pass in summer and autumn.
My movie tells parallel stories of the 1770 rebel leader Vermont Ethan Alan and Pioneer’s black poet Lucy Terry Prince, who settled with his family of grant in New Hampshire in Guilford. The prince’s story unfolded at the same time as Ethan lifted a mine to the west side of the Green Mountains. A happy vacation for us while we were working to connect these stories – Ethan led two invasions to Gilford during this time to thwart the Jokers leaned on the opposite Vermont.
Every screening prompts compelling stories and fertile conversations about Vermont’s history. Some people are trying to sized Ethan’s greater life from life.
The historian Nathaniel Filbrico has covered this period through his biography of Benedict Arnold and talk of revolutionary warfare battles in the hopper Hill and Yortown. Nat met with me to discuss this story during our expiration at the beginning of our production by Nantucket.
Nat described Ethan as a man who pursues an inheritance, rooted in what he described as the “great man” syndrome. Ethan wanted to have an impact and to remember, and he was conducted in ways in which other “founders” did other “founders” – although the data from his life are complex and even controversial.
One of the discoveries I did, by conducting my research, was the realization that the fight in Vermont had some resemblance to two other battles with large lands during this time. The first is called the regulatory movement and it developed as a protest in Western North Carolina between 1765 and 1771.
Poor farmers objected to the fact that they did not have a representation in the government and were taxed at the same rate as a more productive land in the eastern part of the state. For several years, drought worsened things and many had to take money at excessive prices. The settlers felt abused by predatory sheriffs, corrupt employees and non -sympatic courts that were foreclosed on their lands. The protests have become armed resistance to return their land and violate court proceedings. The rebellion was crushed by armed militias loyal to the government of strong man William Trion.
Between the 1750s and 1790s, a series of land and energy struggles in the Hudson River in New York also broke out in the Hudson Valley. Farmers included German, Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English immigrants with black and indigenous people. They rebelled against the wealthy landlords, who collectively owns 2.5 million acres, along with the stores where tenants buy their supplies and the mills where they ground their grain. Captured under the weight of all this and facing unacceptable costs that prevented them from buying their own land, settlers resort to escalating protests and violence.
The rebels challenge the wealthy titles of the landlords who claim to have been misappropriated by the root tribes in many cases. They claimed to be rights to the land as they improved and cultivated it.
King George III liked the work that William Trion did to suppress the rebellion in North Carolina, so he sent a saw to New York, where he ruled from 1771-77. Trion was again successful in suffocating the resistance. Some running rebels from the struggle of the Hudson Valley landed in Vermont and joined the Green Mountain boys’ resistance to some of the same farmers in New York who were in the Hudson pool – and demanded the property of hundreds of thousands of decares here.
A clever and calculating New Hampshire governor Benning Wentworth saw that in New York the lands were largely unresolved-so he began to sell cheap and popular plots of 100 acres, picking up personal profits in 131 cities he allowed.
Ethan Allen and his men were also against a saw, who used the courts in New York, sheriffs and possessed to overcome the rebellious settlers in the territory we now call Vermont. Unlike the battles in North Carolina and the Hudson Valley, Vermont’s fight was successful, although the end of the colonial government of the Government saw did not end the conflict.
Patriot governor George Clinton and the Continental Congress were in no hurry to recognize the settlers of the Green Mountains – and Vermont had to go alone for 13 years as an independent republic who had seriously studied the Union with England.
Finally, Vermonters have prevailed – in my opinion, because the chaos generated by the American Revolution has made it impossible for the gifts to fight on two fronts.
The Lost Nation breaks down into this – as much as a movie that can take on this huge historical moment. But as the state approaches its 250th anniversary, it is a pleasure to get into this story and be able to share it in small cities in the region.
By james art 