Preceded by Office created on January 15, 1778 2nd Governor Moses Robinson Preceded by Himself as 3rd Governor of Vermont Republic |
Thomas Chittenden 1st Governor of The Vermont Republic 1778—1789 3rd Governor 1790—17911st Governor of Vermont 1791—1797 |
Succeeded by 2nd Governor Moses Robinson Succeeded by Himself as 1st Governor of Vermont Succeeded by 2nd Governor Paul Brigham |
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"Gov. Thomas Chittenden was a sailor at age 18. He was a colonel of militia and 6 times was elected a member of the Connecticut Assembly. He removed to Arlington, Va., in 1776 and returned in 1787. At Dorset, July 1776, he helped shape the first compact in the history of the New Hampshire Grants (now Vermont). He served in the Revolutionary War. CS, Vermont." From the notes of Kathryn Chittenden Haines.
"Gov. Thomas Chittenden, son of Ebenezer, removed from Guilford at the age of 21 to Salisbury, in Litchfield County, then in its first settlement, where he was prosperous in business, and a prominent man in the community, sustaining important civil and military offices. In 1773, he removed again to what was then called the New Hampshire Grants, now the State of Vermont. He purchased a large tract of land on Onion River, then a wilderness, which took the name of Williston. Here he began a settlement with brilliant prospects, till the war of the Revolution commenced, when he was driven from his home to a place less exposed to the enemy. He was a leading man in the measures taken to form a separate government for the State of Vermont, and in 1778, was chosen its first Governor, which office he held with the exception of one year until his death."
"Gov. Chittenden possessed in an eminent degree precisely those qualities that fitted him for the place in which he was called to act. He had not, indeed, enjoyed many of the advantages of education, but his want of education was amply supplied by the possession of a strong and active mind, which, at the time when he emigrated to Vermont, was matured by age, practiced in business, and enriched by a careful observation of men and things. His knowledge was practical, rather than theoretical. He was regular in his habits, plain and simple in his manners, averse to ostentation in equipage or dress, and he cared little for the luxuries, blandishments and etiquette of refined society."
"Though he was deficient in many of the qualities now deemed essential in a statesman, he possessed all that was necessary in the times in which he lived, and was probably far better fitted to be the leader and governor of the independent, dauntless and hardy, but uneducated, settlers of Vermont, than would have been a man of greater theoretic knowledge and more political accomplishments." From Talcott, pp. 33, 34.
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Categories: Guilford, Connecticut | Williston, Vermont | Thomas Chittenden Cemetery, Williston, Vermont | Vermont Governors | Namesakes US Counties | United States of America, Notables | Notables