IRA ALLEN (1751-1814). Founder of Vermont, Leader of the Green Mountain Boys, Brother of Ethan Allen, Co-Founder of the Onion River Land Company, First Surveyor General of Vermont, and Founder of the University of Vermont.
September 3rd, 1771-Dated Colonial Era Pre-Revolutionary War, Manuscript Promissory Note fully Signed, “Ira Allen” his flourish below, measuring 5 x 5 inches, dated at Bennington, (VT.), Very Fine. A very rare, signed personal financial document from Ira Allen's earliest years in Vermont, linking two brothers whose family partnership would help shape the founding of an entire state. This note reads, in full:

"Bennington 3d Sept. 1771. --- On the twelfth Day of Sept. next I promise to pay to Heber Allen or order the Sum of Fifteen Pounds with Interest for the same for value received. --- (Signed) Ira Allen".

This note predates by only one year the formal founding of the Onion River Land Company, the ambitious land speculation venture Ira Allen organized with his brothers Ethan, Heber, and Zimri, along with cousin Remember Baker, to acquire and develop land under the New Hampshire Land Grants in what would become Vermont. It captures the two brothers, Ira and Heber, in an ordinary personal financial arrangement at the very outset of that partnership, the same year Ira first arrived in the region as a young surveyor of barely twenty years old.

Ira Allen went on to become one of the foremost central figures in Vermont's founding, serving in the Vermont Legislature during the years surrounding the 1777 Declaration of the Vermont Republic, acting as the State's First Surveyor General from 1779 to 1787, designing the Great Seal of Vermont in 1778, and later founding and endowing the University of Vermont, work that earned him the title "Father of the University of Vermont." His brother Heber Allen, the payee named here, was one of the four Allen brothers who partnered in the Onion River Land Company before his early death, being one of several partners who did not live to see the venture's eventual success once the Revolutionary War had ended. The note is written in vivid deep brown ink on clean laid period paper having a “V with point below” watermark, easily readable and clear, one original ink smudge and mostly rought outer margins, with a very impressive large signature of “Ira Allen” measuring 2.5” long at the conclusion. Rare.
Heber Allen (1743-1782) was one of the six Allen brothers from Cornwall, Connecticut, born April 4, 1743, one of the older siblings between Ethan, the eldest, and Ira, the youngest. He's the payee named in your document, the man Ira promised to pay fifteen pounds back in September 1771.

Heber was one of the founding partners in the Onion River Land Company, the land speculation venture Ira organized in 1772 with Ethan, Zimri, and their cousin Remember Baker to buy up land under the New Hampshire Grants in what's now Vermont. Heber was one of the original investors backing Ira's scheme from the very start.

He also held the rank of Major in the Vermont Republic militia during the Revolutionary War, service for which he's still recognized today as a DAR and SAR Patriot ancestor. He settled in Poultney, Vermont, where he's remembered locally as one of the town's earliest settlers.

Heber died relatively young, on April 10, 1782, at Poultney, at just 39 years old, roughly a decade after this note was written. He didn't live to see the Onion River Land Company's speculative gamble eventually pay off once the Revolutionary War had ended.

This note, then, captures Heber a full decade before his death, right at the very outset of the family's land speculation venture in Vermont.