Joseph Allen, the father of Ethan, comes to the surface of history about the year 1720, one year after the death of Addison and the first publication of "Robinson Crusoe," in the town of Coventry, in Eastern Connecticut, twenty miles east of Hartford. When he first appears to us he is a minor and an orphan. His widowed mother, Mercy, has several children, one of them of age. Their first recorded act is emigration fifty miles westward to Litchfield, famous for its scenery and ancient elms, located between the Naugatuck and the Shepaug rivers, on the Green and Taconic mountain ranges; famous also as the place where the first American ladies' seminary was located, and most famous of all for its renowned law-school, begun over a century ago by Judge Tapping Reeve and continued by Judge James Gould. Chief Justice John Pierpoint and United States Senator S. S. Phelps were among its notable pupils. The widow, Mercy Allen, died in Litchfield, February 5, 1728. Her son Joseph bought one-third of her real estate. Within five years he sold two tracts, of 100 acres each, and fourteen years after his mother's death he sold the residue as wild land. On March 11, 1737, Joseph Allen was married to Mary Baker, daughter of John Baker, of Woodbury, sister of Remember Baker, who was father of the Remember Baker that came to Vermont. Thus Ethan Allen and Remember Baker were cousins. Ethan Allen was born January 10, 1737, and died February 21, 1789, and consequently he has been said to have been fifty-two years, one month and two days old. In fact, he was fifty-one years, one month and two days old. The year 1737 terminated March 24. Had it closed December 31, Allen would have been born in 1738. The first day of the year was March 25 until 1752 in England and her colonies. In 1751 the British Parliament changed New Year's Day from March 25 to January 1. The year 1751 had no January, no February, and only seven days of March. Allen was thirteen years old in 1750, and was fourteen years old in 1752. The year 1738 gave birth to three honest men--Ethan Allen, George III., and Benjamin West. In 1738 George Washington was six years old, John Adams three years old, John Stark ten years old, Israel Putnam twenty years old. Seth Warner and Jefferson were born five years later. In that year no claim had ever been made to Vermont by New York or New Hampshire. No one had ever questioned the right of Massachusetts to the English part of Vermont. New Hampshire was bounded on the west by the Merrimac. Colden, the surveyor-general of New York, in an official report bounded New York on the east by Connecticut and Massachusetts, on the north by Lake Ontario and Canada; Canada occupying Crown Point and Chimney Point.