Did Vermont’s founding hero carry a man purse?

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I’m just back in the office after some serious downtime in my home state of Vermont, and there’s an image I can’t get out of my mind: a needlepoint embellished clutch purse on display at the Ethan Allen Homestead in Burlington, Vt.

For anyone not as steeped in the early history of Vermont as those who grew up there, Ethan Allen is the outlaw/patriot/rabble-rouser/drunkard/philosopher credited with leading the Green Mountain Boys to an assault of Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, the opening skirmish in what would soon become the Revolutionary War, and later leading Vermont to statehood (though ‘Vermont’s godfather’ passed away two years before Vermont became the 14th state in 1791).

The aforementioned clutch was sitting on a desk in a room just off the the front entrance of the homestead, set up as Allen himself might have, with maps of the era, a clay pipe and his quill pen. Our tour guide picked up the feminine-looking wallet decorated in shades of pink and red that tied shut with a strap, and explained that during Allen’s era, it was commonplace for women to present their sweethearts with such items as a way to be remembered to them during the long stretches they were out fighting, hunting, surveying land and the like. (On the wall of Allen’s re-created office I also noticed a plain woven cloth sack that resembled a current day messenger bag. Earlier in the day, re-enactors at Fort Ticonderoga had worn similar pieces slung over their shoulders).

So it’s safe to assume that Vermont’s founding hero carried what today would amount to a man purse (or ‘murse’), or at least be kitted out with a somewhat girlie-looking wallet -- which is good to know. If more of the residents of my home state were aware of that fact, perhaps I wouldn’t have received the odd stares I did as I traipsed through rural Vermont with my Jack Spade messenger bag slung over my shoulder.

Then again, maybe it was that tricorne.

--Adam Tschorn