As we celebrate this summer the 250th anniversary of our nation, it is only fitting that we also honor the memory and accomplishments of Vermont’s own fighting militia — the Green Mountain Boys.

The Green Mountain Boys were originally organized to protect the property rights of settlers holding New Hampshire land grants against competing claims from New York. When those disputes turned bitter, the Boys defended what they believed was rightfully theirs with a determination that sometimes meant driving settlers from disputed lands, confiscating cattle, or burning buildings. Their methods could be rough, but without the Green Mountain Boys, we would not know the Vermont we know today.

When the American Revolution began, the Green Mountain Boys were among the first to answer the call. Under the leadership of Ethan Allen, and alongside Benedict Arnold, just a few hundred men captured Fort Ticonderoga. It was one of the first American victories of the Revolution and inspired countless others to lay down their scythes, leave their farms, and take up arms in the cause of liberty.

Although he was born more than 130 years after those events, Theron Boyd carried their stories as though he had lived them himself.

He could recite song after song and story after story of the Green Mountain Boys’ exploits, the battles won and the battles lost. He spoke of Ethan Allen’s imprisonment as if he had been there beside him. Wearing his Green Mountain Boys cap, he would sing along with the old ballads playing on the Victrola, every verse committed to memory.

The fortieth anniversary of winning back Theron’s farm is fast approaching, and I still think about the last day of that trial.

That morning, Theron would not get out of bed.

He was exhausted. He was traumatized. The courtroom drama had simply become too much for him. The day before, he had looked at the judges in their black robes and quietly repeated, over and over, “I’m a farmer. I’m not a lawyer.”

Theron Boyd and Chris Clark

There was no convincing him. I had all but given up. As I turned to leave his room, one last thought came to me. I began to recite the words of an old Green Mountain Boys ballad:

On our south came the Hessians, our land to police,


And arming for battle while canting of peace.


On our east came the British, the red-coated band,


To hang up our leaders and eat up our land…

Then I continued:

We owe no allegiance; we bow to no throne.


Our rule is the law, and the law is our own.


Our leaders themselves are our own fellow men,


Who can handle the sword, the scythe, or the pen.

Theron slept between two feather mattresses. Without saying a word, he pushed one aside, sat straight up — fully dressed beneath the covers — and belted out:

Then cheer, cheer for the Green Mountaineer!


Hurrah for Vermont, for the land which we till


Must have sons that defend her from valley and hill.


Our vow is recorded, our banner unfurled;


In the name of Vermont we defy all the world!


Then cheer, cheer for the Green Mountaineer!

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, looked at me, and said, “We better go.”

We drove to Woodstock like Ira and Ethan riding into battle.

The lawsuit sought to take half of Theron’s property. We came home with all of it. One hundred percent of the farm remained his, protected from development and secured for generations to come. What happened in that courtroom forty years ago still feels a little magical.

Theron was famous for saying, “The world runs on emotion and greed.” That day, emotion won.

Whenever I hear those old Vermont ballads, I think back to that morning. I can still see Theron throwing back the feather bed, singing at the top of his lungs, and marching out the door ready for one last fight.

Cheer, cheer for the Green Mountaineer.

Publisher’s Note: “Wisdom Stories” is an ongoing column featuring the life, times, and wisdom of Theron Boyd, a Quechee old timer in the 1970s, as told by an unlikely best friend, Chris Clark, a teenager at the time. If you have any ‘Theron’ stories you would like to contribute, contact the Quechee Times at editor@quecheetimes.com.

This edition of Wisdom Stories arrives in a milestone year: our Semiquincentennial.

If you prefer Bisesquicentennial — or, for that matter, Sestercentennial — those work, too. But for simplicity’s sake, let’s call it America 250.

We are officially 250 years into this great experiment in democracy.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how fortunate we were that our Founding Fathers and the framers of the Constitution had Crazy King George III as a cautionary example of what unchecked power looks like. Having lived under the rule of a “Mad King,” they built safeguards into the system to protect the nation. They also knew well the excesses symbolized by King Louis XIV’s gilded palaces.

This may be the year we learn just how well those safeguards hold.

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Quechee is home to one of the most historically significant wooden structures of the Revolutionary period.

The Theron Boyd Homestead was built ten years after the American Revolution and five years before Vermont achieved statehood. The house has endured Vermont’s brutal winters and the shifting tides of economic change, shrinking from an original 500 acres to the 35 acres it sits on today.

Built by the son of the Burch family — the first settlers of Hartland — the homestead once served as a stagecoach stop. It is said that settlers bound for South Pomfret spent the night there before continuing on to establish the town. At its height, the property was a thriving hill farm, producing crops, Merino sheep, Morgan horses, Durham cattle, and copious amounts of maple sugar.

It’s easy to imagine how welcome the glow of a lantern through twelve-by-twelve windows must have been to weary travelers — after days jolting along in a stagecoach, braving brutal winter weather and the uncertainties of the frontier.

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Theron Boyd making dinner

The Udall family purchased the farm at the turn of the 19th century and, in 1830, added the brick ell at the rear of the house. Originally two stories tall, the ell reportedly served as dormitories for Vermont’s first agricultural school.

By the 1860s, the home had become part of the Underground Railroad. Runaway slaves were hidden in a honeycombed chimney concealed behind a picture.

The Cowdry family acquired the property in the late 1800s, and in 1901, Theron Boyd was born in the home.

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In the early 1970s, John Davidson — the visionary behind the Quechee Lakes development — approached Theron about purchasing the farm. According to Theron, Davidson offered him one million dollars for land he intended to use to raise three horses.

Theron’s response was unforgettable. He told Davidson that he didn’t know whether Davidson was “a damn fool, or thought I was one,” and then ordered him off the land.

With that moment, Theron Boyd became a symbol of resistance — and a Vermont folk hero. He was featured in the documentary So Goes Vermont, which played twice daily in Montpelier. As National Geographic later observed, this was a time when Vermonters were sharply divided: those determined to preserve the past, and those eager to subdivide the future.

Theron’s position was never in doubt.

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I began writing this piece on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and it stirred memories of my first Black friend, Carter Crosby.

Carter lived in the Columbia Point housing projects in Roxbury and was part of the METCO program that bused underprivileged city kids into suburban schools. He became my classmate — and my friend — at Scituate Junior High.

One weekend, Carter came to Quechee with me. We had an incredible time. He had never been north of Boston before.

Theron had had little, if any, interaction with Black people. He was shy at first, but he was eager to show Carter the hidden entrance — the hole you climbed into — where enslaved people once hid while traveling north on the Underground Railroad.

What I wouldn’t give to have a photograph of Carter emerging from that hideaway.

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As America turns 250, it is worth remembering that our history is not only written in founding documents or court decisions, but in places like this — farmhouses that stood their ground, hidden spaces carved out of necessity, and quiet acts of resistance passed down through memory.

Democracy, like the Boyd homestead, endures not because it is untouched by time, but because generation after generation chooses to protect what matters. Sometimes that protection looks like saying no to power. Sometimes it looks like opening a door — or revealing a hidden one — and inviting someone else inside.

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HOME

By Christopher Casey Clark

Home
has been now for over 80 years
I’ve worn a path to my room,
up narrow wooden stairs

In my old bed,
I lay my head in the company.
of a fading memory
of how it used to be,
long years ago
in this home…

Winter winds whip thru the
clapboards
they nestle in my bone
but the worst thing about this place
is living here alone
but please don’t take me
from the secrets the walls have
compiled
for they are my everything,
without them
I’m a King exiled
this big old house t’wernt built
to be lived in alone
but it’s all I’ve got
it’s my home.

Alone,
have been now for over 50 Years
the growing fears,
the Christmas cheers
spent on my own

You’d think with all these empty rooms
there would be someone here with me,
but it seems long ago the discovered
a need for electricity

I have seen Vermont’s slow but sure demise
Generations grow weak while they grow wise

No you can’t take me,
from the secrets the walls have
compiled
They are my everything
without them
I’m a King exiled
This big old house Twernt built to be lived in alone
50 Years on my own

It could barely hold out the weather
If the truth be known
But it held my world together
It’s my Home

Publisher’s Note: “Wisdom Stories” is an ongoing column featuring the life, times, and wisdom of Theron Boyd, a Quechee old timer in the 1970s, as told by an unlikely best friend, Chris Clark, a teenager at the time. If you have any ‘Theron’ stories you would like to contribute, contact the Quechee Times at editor@quecheetimes.com.

Theron Boyd

Fifty years ago, our great nation was preparing to celebrate its Bicentennial. The air was filled with excitement – news of the Tall Ships touring the East Coast and mooring in Newport for the Fourth of July, parades marching through the streets, fireworks lighting up the summer sky. After years of protest and division over forced busing in Boston and the unpopular war in Vietnam, I remember feeling a renewed sense of patriotism, an awakening of unity after long discord.

My mother had remarried and moved to Rhode Island. She urged me to leave Quechee and come visit to see the Tall Ships, promising it was a once-in-a-lifetime event. She was right, of course, but I decided to stay in Vermont.

At sixteen, I was tapped into the Vermont life and drew from it like a sugar maker draws sap from a maple – an endless flow of inspiration running through the flues of my young imagination.

In the three years I had known Theron, I had grown to love his way of breaking into song – an Indian maiden named Red Wing, The Ballad of Barbara Fritchie waving her flag at General Stonewall Jackson, or his powerful recitation of The Gettysburg Address. If you closed your eyes, you could almost believe Abraham Lincoln himself was speaking from the back of a train.

I found many old poetry books in the abandoned buildings of Quechee. I fell in love with reading poems and hearing them read aloud, and soon I was encouraged to write my own.

I remember sitting in a booth at my dad’s restaurant, The Food Caboose, at the Gorge. Hugh Laughlin, from Scotland By The Yard, was there and asked what I was working on. I told him I was trying to write a poem about Theron Boyd. “What do you see?” he asked. “Circles,” I said. “Where?” he asked. “Around the old man’s eyes.” He smiled. “Keep going.”

My high school English teacher, Bob Velleca, read my poem and, without telling me, submitted it to a national poetry contest for the Bicentennial. I had no idea until it was announced that Circles had won.

The poem was published in Young America Sings, a national anthology, and placed into the time capsule inside the Washington Monument in 1976.

Theron was deeply touched that our poem had been recognized. He encouraged me to keep reciting Circles and to continue writing the Vermont poems and songs that flowed from those early days.

Now, fifty years later, I’m still writing – and it’s comforting to know that a small piece of Quechee history, and of Theron Boyd himself, rests sealed in time, beneath the stone of the Washington Monument.

Circles

Circles around an old man’s eyes,
That meet at a line
When he squints in the sun,
Are circles of knowledge
And a time gone by.
He whittled the cheese with a rusty old knife,
Told tales of an early life,
Enticed my imagination with the words he spoke
of how the fields were plowed with an ox and yoke.
Circles round an old man’s eyes,
That meet at a line
When he squints in the sun
Are circles of knowledge
And a time gone by.
I sat, he talked and reminisced,
Felt cheated of those days I had missed.
Circles around an old man’s eyes…
~ Chris Clark , Quechee, Vermont, 1976