Who Was Fanny Allen?

Frances Montressor Brush Buchanan Allen Penniman married Ethan Allen in 1784 and lived here at the Burlington Homestead with him starting in 1787 — but that doesn’t even begin to tell her story!

Fanny Allen (1760-1834) was the illegitimate daughter of a British officer who never acknowledged her. She was raised by her mother Margaret Schoolcraft and her stepfather Colonel Crean Brush, first in New York City and then in Westminster, VT. Brush was a fierce advocate for New York’s claim to the New Hampshire Grants (as Vermont was then called), making him an adversary to his future son-in-law, Ethan Allen.

Fanny and her family fled Vermont when the Revolutionary War started in 1775. They were loyalists and moved back to New York City, where the British Army was still stationed. There, Fanny became engaged to be wed to a British soldier, but he tragically drowned in the Hudson River on his way to visit her shortly before the wedding. Family history says that this man was her true love, and she wore his locket for the rest of her life. Fanny instead married a different British solder when she was sixteen years old. Her first husband, John Buchanan, died in battle at Saratoga in 1777. Their only child died at a young age. Around the same time, Fanny’s stepfather Crean Brush also died, leaving Fanny and her aunt financially unstable and struggling to reclaim his lands that they inherited.

Fanny married Ethan Allen in 1784, when she was 24 years old. One of the reasons Fanny married Ethan was so Ethan could represent her in court to get back her family lands in Vermont. Ethan was successful — and then became the owner of Fanny’s lands because he was her husband, per the custom of the time.

Though their marriage seems to have been a happy one, it lasted only five short years before Ethan Allen died in 1789, leaving Fanny with three small children.

Dear Fanny wise, the beautiful and young, the partner of my joys, my dearest self, my love, pride of my life, your sexes pride, and partner of sincere politeness…

An inscription from Ethan Allen found in Fanny’s copy of “Reason the Only Oracle of Man”

Fanny’s affluent upbringing meant she was highly educated, in an era when few women had such privilege. Accounts suggest that Fanny and Ethan complemented each other intellectually, though she disliked Ethan’s rougher tendencies (as did many others).

Fanny was notably well-trained in botany. Beginning in 1814, Fanny and her teenaged daughter Adelia started collecting and cataloguing local plant specimens. Their records from this time provide some of the best examples of early flora of Vermont. They are now kept at the Pringle Herbarium at the University of Vermont.

In 1793 Fanny married her third husband, Jabez Penniman, a judge from Colchester, VT. Their family lived at the Homestead from 1794-1799, before they moved to Colchester, Vermont.

Frontier and Flowers

Watch our short documentary on Fanny Allen’s fascinating life.