B: Hampton CT 15 June 1740
M: Vernon CT 23 April 1763
D: Bennington VT 5 Apr 1813

siblings:?

Samuel evidently taught school at Bolton CT (near Vernon) for some time, but Samuel and Abigail seem to have gone to Bennington before 1770 (only Jonathan was born in CT?), but exactly what drew them thither [push or pull] isn't clear. Jackson Turner Main's Society and economy in colonial Connecticut (Princeton UP 1985) suggests that the 1740s were relatively depressed. After the French and Indian Wars the frontier areas (like VT) became attractive to settlers.

Robert E. Shalhope's Bennington and the Green Mountain boys : the emergence of liberal democracy in Vermont, 1760-1850 (Johns Hopkins Press, 1996) suggests that many Connecticut settlers in Bennington were religious refugees --Separates who saw the frontier as a solution to Congregational oppression. Norwich was evidently a center of such sentiments, and Samuel-the-father may well have been of the Separate persuasion. Incidentally, Ethan Allen's wife was a Brownson. Is there some closer connection? (There is a Brownson-in-England page, and another on the Connecticut Brownsons)