The average Vermonter of our times, who up to 1904 had lived under a
prohibitory law and become accustomed to look upon brewing and tapping as
callings to be shunned by decent people, may possibly find it difficult to
realize that the first Governor of the Green Mountain Republic, Thomas
Chittenden, the man who fills a larger place in the history of Vermont, and
who has done more for the independence and civic welfare of his people than
any other, was a brewing tavern-keeper---a man whose unselfishness,
patriotism, courage and wisdom won for him unstinted praise at home and
abroad.
http://hbd.org/brewery/library/ambeer/AB_02.html
A modern historian (Rowland A. Robinson in "American Commonwealths"), with a
keen perception of the fitness of things, concludes his work with these
words: "The history of Vermont is one that her people may well be proud of.
Such shall it continue to be, if her sons depart not from the wise and
fatherly counsel of her first Governor (Chittenden) to be a 'faithful,
industrious and moral people', and not in all their appointments 'to have
regard to none but those who maintain a good moral character, men of
integrity and distinguished for wisdom and abilities.'"
One cannot mention Chittenden without thinking of his friend, Captain Stephen
Fay, the landlord of the Catamount Tavern, who had five sons in the Battle of
Bennington, and left one of them dead upon the bloody field. It was in the
council chamber of this Catamount Tavern that the leaders of the Green
Mountain Boys, among them Ethan Allen, met after the Battle of Lexington and
determined to "unite with their countrymen" against the common enemy.