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| UNIFORMS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION The controversy between the settlers of the New Hampshire Grants and the New York colonial officials before the Revolution, had caused the men of the various towns in New Hampshire and Vermont to form themselves into military companies, for self-protection. These companies were formed into a regiment as early as 1771, under Ethan Allen as colonel. Seth Warner was captain of the Bennington company, which was organized in 1764. All of these companies were well drilled and equipped. Very little thought was given to uniforms, for we find that most of them wore buckskin jackets and breeches, or sagathy small clothes. Colonel Allen wrote that, when he was captured at Montreal, he wore a Canadian dress, viz.: a short fawn-skin jacket double-breasted, an undervest and breeches of sagathy, worsted stockings, a decent pair of shoes, plain shirt, red worsted cap. This was the kind of clothing worn by the Green Mountain Boys in I 1775 at Ticonderoga and later at Bunker Hill. When a new regiment of Green Mountain Boys was authorized by the Continental Congress, and also by a resolution of the New York Congress, July 4, 1775, Seth Warner was made colonel of a regiment of five hundred men, and was sent to the Northern Army under Schuyler and Montgomery. This regiment was styled the Green Mountain Rangers, and served under Montgomery at St. Johns, but not being provided with winter clothing, they were sent home before the advance on Quebec, but later joined the Army again. Their dress uniform was as follows: black f elt hats cocked, green coats f aced with red, buckskin waistcoats and breeches, coarse woolen stockings, heavy low shoes, checked and white shirts. In the field, they were mostly equipped with rifle frocks, worn over the coats or without the coats. All were not equipped with bayonets, and their arms were English or French muskets, though some carried American rifles. [REFERENCES: Journal of the N. Y. Provincial Congress, I, 63, 65, 107, 130; Vermont Revolutionary Rolls, John E. Goodrich, ed. (Rutland, Vt., 1904) ; A Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen's Captivity, written by himself (Philadelphia, 1779), page 19.] |
| Green Mountain Rangers, 1776
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