Like other colonists during her time, Ann Story (1741–1817) was a fierce woman who refused to give up her home once the Revolutionary War broke out. She played a large role in fighting with other Vermonters for the land she had worked. In fact, due to her efforts during the war, Vermont was secured and eventually added as a state in 1791.
Story was an attractive and muscular woman who could wield an axe and handle a rifle quite well. She was born in Connecticut around 1836 and married Amos Story when she was 19. With their growing family, Amos and Ann dreamed of living on their own land.
In 1774, Amos Story acquired 100 acres in Salisbury, Vermont and took his eldest son Solomon, who was 13 at the time, to build a house. They finished building a cabin by the spring of 1775, and started clearing land to farm. Then tragedy struck.
While cutting down a tree with his son, it twisted and fell on of Amos pinning him underneath it; he died instantly. Solomon found a neighbor who helped him bury his father. He then traveled 150 miles to the colony of Connecticut to inform his mother.
Story was now a widow with five children and she was more determined than ever to live on land near a creek that her husband had claimed. Later in 1775, she and her children moved into the cabin her husband had built and began to farm the land.
Once the Revolutionary War started, many Vermont settlers left their farms and traveled south where it was safer, but Story remained. She aided the Vermont militia, known as the “Green Mountain Boys,” in the cause against the British. According to the 1950 issue of Vermont Quarterly, A Magazine of History, Story told the Boys: “Give me a place among you, and see if I am the first to desert my post.” Story trained her children to be lookouts while they worked their fields.
One day in 1776, one of her children alerted her that Native Americans who sided with the British were on their way toward her homestead; they had already burned down a house owned by one of her neighbors. Story quickly put her children into a canoe and floated toward a nearby forest that was flooded at the time. The family hid and, from a distance, watched their cabin burn to the ground. Story rebuilt her home and kept her family on the land.
Knowing this would not be the last attack on her homestead, Story knew that she had to find a permanent hiding place for her family. The cabin they rebuilt had a trap door to a path that could take them to the creek.
Story then dug a cave into the side of Otter Creek that could hide the canoe without leaving a trace. The family would spend the days in the cabin and on the land, but at night they would disappear into the cave and sleep inside.
One day while her children were out gathering wood, they told their mother about a girl near the land, crying. Thinking at first that it could be a trap, Story watched from the distance. When she approached the girl, Story found out that the young woman had been kidnapped by Native Americans, who abandoned her because she was pregnant. Story took in the girl and served as her midwife to deliver the baby.
However, Story’s kindness would soon lead to trouble. As Loyalist Ezekiel Jenny was walking nearby, he heard the baby crying inside the cave. Jenny spied on the family until he saw the canoe come back. Once he found Story, the loyalist held her at gunpoint and demanded answers about the location and movements of the Green Mountain Boys. But Story fiercely held her ground and refused divulge any information.
Story followed Jenny once he left and then sent one of her boys to alert the militia. The Green Mountain Boys waited until it was dark before raiding the loyalist camp. Instead of killing the 14 men, the militia hiked them to Fort Ticonderoga where they were held as prisoners for the duration of the war. Story continued to aid the Green Mountain Boys by feeding them and giving them a place to stay.
Our vow is recorded—our banner unfurled, In the name of Vermont we defy all the world!
Ann Story, Vermonter through and through, played an important role in the early days of her beloved state. She died in 1817 at the age of 75.
