The Damndest Yankees: Ethan Allen and His Clan

by Edwin P. Hoyt

An account of the Allen family of Colonial and Revolutionary Connecticut and Vermont, including Ethan, and of the local and more widely significant events in which they participated

262 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1976

About the author

Edwin P. Hoyt was a prolific American writer who specialized in military history. He was born in Portland, Oregon to the publisher Edwin Palmer Hoyt (1897–1979) and his wife, the former Cecile DeVore (1901–1970). A younger brother, Charles Richard, was born in 1928. Hoyt attended the University of Oregon from 1940 to 1943.

In 1943, Hoyt's father, then the editor and publisher of The Oregonian, was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt as the director of the Domestic Branch, Office of War Information. The younger Hoyt served with the Office of War Information during World War II, from 1943 to 1945. In 1945 and 1946, he served as a foreign correspondent for The Denver Post (of which his father became editor and publisher in 1946) and the United Press, reporting from locations in China, Thailand, Burma, India, the Middle East, Europe, North Africa, and Korea.

Edwin Hoyt subsequently worked as an ABC broadcaster, covering the 1948 revolution in Czechoslovakia and the Arab-Israeli conflict. From 1949 to 1951, he was the editor of the editorial page at The Denver Post. He was the editor and publisher of the Colorado Springs Free Press from 1951 to 1955, and an associate editor of Collier's Weekly in New York from 1955 to 1956. In 1957 he was a television producer and writer-director at CBS, and in 1958 he was an assistant publisher of American Heritage magazine in New York.

Starting in 1958, Hoyt became a writer full-time, and for a few years (1976 to 1980) served as a part-time lecturer at the University of Hawaii. In the 40 years since his first publication in 1960, he produced nearly 200 published works.

While Hoyt wrote about 20 novels (many published under pseudonyms Christopher Martin and Cabot L. Forbes) the vast majority of his works are biographies and other forms of non-fiction, with a heavy emphasis on World War II military history.

Hoyt died in Tokyo, Japan on July 29, 2005, after a prolonged illness. He was survived by his wife Hiroko, of Tokyo, and three children, Diana, Helga, and Christopher, all residing in the U.S.

Reviews

[Daniel Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really entertaining telling of the history of the Allan clan and early Vermont. Many outside of the state do not know Vermont is the 14th state because it refused to join the other 13 and was an independent nation for awhile after the Revolution. Nor that both New York and New Hampshire (and Canada) at various times wanted to absorb it into their states. Ethan and his brothers (notably Ira) were the main reason behind keeping Vermont independent, masterfully playing the rough game of colonial politics as amusingly recounted in this book. It does fade at the end, mainly because (spolier!) Ethan, the most outrageous of the bunch, dies, and Ira's last years took place outside of Vermont and thus were hastily told. Overall though a very enjoyable read.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Older style narrative history.

[Dawn Dorsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Growing up in the cradle of the American Revolution, I heard and read numerous stories about the legendary Ethan Allen, hero of Fort Ticonderoga, and the Green Mountain boys, but never learned much beyond that exploit. In this biography we learn much more of not only Ethan, but his whole clan of numerous siblings and cousins, and their roles in not just the Revolution, but the early settlement of the wilderness claimed simultaneously by New York and New Hampshire, with a corner also claimed by the Massachusetts Bay colony, for decades before the Revolution, which later became Vermont.

Setting his story firmly in its historical context, Mr Hoyt delineates how the Allen clan and their close friends were integrally involved in the rivalries among the squabbling colonies and land speculators, and leaders among the relative few who cleared the forests, surveyed and built roads and towns, and physically settled and farmed the area. He also delved into the complicated politics as the settlers of the area struggled to hold and wrest a living from their land while also battling the conflicting interests of distant colonial governors and speculators who had no intention of living there, but saw the land as a lucrative source of personal income. Vermonters began to develop their own character, petitioned the Crown for status as a separate colony, and struggled to become variously a colony, or a state in its own right along with the 13 revolting colonies, an independent republic, or even a province of Canada, in their desperate efforts to hold the land they worked.

The book is a readable history and biography, and of interest to anyone who studies American colonial and revolutionary history, Vermont history, or just loves tales of Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys.