Flickr UserDon Shall//CC BY - NC - ND 2.0
Ethan Allen : Revolutionary War sub ; founder of the state of Vermont ; namesake of an overpriced furniture store . Yes , he did a wad for our country , and after his death in 1789 , his family and the state wanted to ensure that his grave was worthy of him and easy identify by any succeeding visitors .
When he break , Allen ’s familymarked the plotwith a gravestone that take , “ The Corporeal part of Ethan Allen Rests beneath this Stone , the 12th day of Feb. 1789 , Aged 50 Years . His flavor tried the Mercies of God , in Whom Alone He believed and Strongly Trusted . ” They intend , of course , for their patriarch to take a breather peacefully at the Greenmount Cemetery in Burlington , Vermont , for all of eternity . In reality , we ’re not sure how long his restful sleep in the sept secret plan was — but it certainly was n’t timelessness .
In 1858 , the Vermont general assembly decide to honour Allen with a 42 - foot gravemarker chromatography column , one that would pay right homage to their most notable son . When they went to establish the monolith , however , they ran into a little problem : There was no eubstance underneath . There had been no grave robbery that anyone was aware of , so functionary wondered if perhaps the original marking had just been misplaced . They sought out two aged townspeople who claimed to have attended Allen ’s funeral when they were just kid . Neither of them were any help in cop down a entombment fix .
Another theory as to the position of the “ material part ” of Ethan Allen : He was never lay to rest in that cemetery to begin with . Some Allen enthusiasts say he would n’t have require to eternally rest in a place surrounded by people who consider in organized religion , andsecretly arranged to be interred elsewhere .
Whatever go on to be the truth , no one was unforced to compass up the entire cemetery in search of Allen ’s corpse , so the legislature determine tofudge the wordingof their new memorial a bit :
To this day , Allen ’s factual whereabouts are strange .
And here ’s another mystery : Although a life - size statue adorns the top of this 42 - foot column , it credibly does n’t front much like Allen at all . No photograph or depictions of him were known to exist . The close anyone could descend was to dig up a photo of his grandson , General Ethan Allen Hitchcock , who was enjoin to somewhat resemble his grandfather .
