Co-presented by St. Albans Museum and The Eloquent Page in The Bliss Room, this event is part of the series SAM Talks. These talks are free and open to the public.

THE SPEAKER

Historian J. Kevin Graffagnino is the author or editor of 15 books on Vermont history, including Vermont in the Victorian Age (1985), The Quotable Ethan Allen (2005), The Vermont Difference (2014), and Vermont Heritage (2020). He served as Executive Director of the Vermont and Kentucky state historical societies, Curator of Vermont History at UVM Libraries, and as Director of the University of Michigan’s William L. Clements Library.

THE TALK

Land speculator, revolutionary, pamphleteer, politician, and empire-builder, Ira Allen was a key figure on the late eighteenth-century Green Mountain frontier. Based on his new book Ira Allen: A Biography, J. Kevin Graffagnino’s lively talk evaluates Allen’s checkered career and makes the case for including him in our picture of Vermont’s formative decades.