Gwen Stefani

Unusually, like its neighbor New Hampshire, Vermont tends to elect more independents than other states; in the U.S. Jeffords was a former Republican but left the party in 2001 as a result of political disagreements and now caucuses with the Democrats. Senate, Vermont is represented by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, and Senator James Jeffords, an independent. In the U.S.

Appointments to the state supreme court, superior court, and district courts are made by the governor and approved by the General Assembly. Judges on lower courts are elected on a partisan ballot. Superior courts in the state are made up of eight judges serving a term of six years. The Vermont Supreme Court is the state supreme court, made up of five justices who served six year terms. Like the governor, members of the General Assembly serve two-year terms.

The Senate is composed of 30 state senators, while the House of Representatives has 150 members. The Vermont's state legislature is the Vermont General Assembly, a bicameral body composed of the Vermont House of Representatives (the lower house) and the Vermont Senate (the upper house). Unlike other states, Vermont does not have a term limit for the governor. The current governor of Vermont is Jim Douglas, who assumed office in 2003.

state). Vermonters independently elect a state Governor and Lieutenant Governor every two years (as opposed to every four years, which is the most common term length for a governor of a U.S. Provision is made for the following governing institutions under the Constitution of the State of Vermont. The age of consent in Vermont is 16.

Arthur. Vermont is the birthplace of former presidents Calvin Coolidge and Chester A. The Vermont Progressive Party is a small, left-wing political party created in the early 1980s and has held a handful of seats in the Vermont legislature for two decades and is affiliated with Vermont's lone congressman, Bernie Sanders; it has had official recognition as a political party by the state government since 1999. In the early 1960s many progressive Vermont Republicans and newcomers to the state helped bolster the State's then-small Democratic Party.

The Republican Party dominated Vermont politics throughout most of the late 1800s and into the early 1900s. With a campaign budget of $201, Tuttle garnered 55 percent of the primary vote, before conceding the general election to Patrick Leahy. In 1998, a 79-year-old local man named Fred Tuttle won national attention by defeating a Massachusetts multimillionare in the Republican Primary for United States Senate. Attempts by out-of-state candidates (so called "flatlanders") to win a seat in Vermont have often been thwarted by locals.

The Vermont government maintains a proactive stance with regards to the environment, social services and prevention of urbanization. Vermonters are known for their political independence and liberal views. See also: List of forts in Vermont. Another flood occurred in 1973, when the flood caused the death of two people and the loss of millions of dollars in property damage.

During this incident, 85 people died, 84 of them in Vermont. Large-scale flooding occurred in early November 1927. The first election in which women were allowed to vote was on December 18, 1880, when women were granted limited suffrage and were allowed to vote in school board elections. This unit remains the hardest-fighting brigade in the history of the United States military.

The most famous Vermont unit was the hard-fighting First Vermont Brigade. Vermont also sent over 30,000 men into the service of the Union Army, of which some one out of three did not return, a higher proportion of men sent and lost than any other state. Young ordered his troops to burn the town down, but the four-ounce bottles of Greek fire they had brought failed to work. One townsperson was killed and another wounded.

As the banks were being robbed, eight or nine of the Confederates held the townspeople prisoner on the village green as their horses were stolen. They announced that they were Confederate soldiers and stole a total of $208,000. Just before 3:00 p.m., the group simultaneously staged an armed robbery of the three banks in the town. By October 19, there was 21 men.

John's in Canada for a "sporting vacation." Every day, two or three more young men arrived. Young and two others checked into a local hotel on October 10, saying that they had come from St. Albans, Vermont, a quiet town 15 miles from the Canadian border. Young was commissioned as a Lieutenant and returned to Canada, where he recruited other escaped rebels to participate in the October 19, 1864 raid on St.

Morgan went to the south, where he proposed Canada-based raids on the Union as a means of building the Confederate treasury and forcing the Union army to protect their northern border as a diversion. Young had been captured in John Hunt Morgan's 1863 raid in Ohio, but escaped to Canada in the fall of that year. Young led Confederate forces. In this incident, one of the most unusual in American history, Bennett H.

The northernmost land action of the American Civil War took place in Vermont on October 19, 1864. Vermont had a unicameral legislature until 1836. In 1791, Vermont joined the Union as the 14th member–the first state to enter the union after the original 13 colonies, and a counterweight to Kentucky, which was admitted to the Union shortly afterward. Thomas Chittenden, who came to Vermont from Connecticut in 1774, acted as President of Vermont from 1778 to 1789 and from 1790 to 1791.

Vermont continued to govern itself as a sovereign entity based in the eastern town of Windsor for 14 years. Stark became widely known as the "Hero of Bennington" and the anniversary of the battle became a legal holiday in Vermont, known as "Bennington Day.". The battle is seen as the turning point in the Revolutionary War because it was the first major defeat of a British general and it convinced the French that the Americans were worthy of military aid. They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow!" With reinforcements from the Vermont militia, American forces routed the British, leading to the surrender of John Burgoyne's 6000-man force at Saratoga on October 17.

Stark prepared his men to fight to the death, telling them that: "There are your enemies, the redcoats and the Tories. Ordered to retreat by Continental Army leaders, Stark had refused and instead led his men to fight the British troops and Hessian mercenaries. However, Vermont men played the most important role in the battle and were led by General John Stark and Colonel Seth Warner of Vermont. On August 16, 1777, the Battle of Bennington took place, not at Bennington but just across the New York border.

The tavern has been preserved as the Old Constitution House, administered as a state historic site. This was the first written constitution in North America and the first to constitutionally provide for the abolition of slavery, suffrage for men who did not own land, and public schools. On July 4, the Constitution of Vermont was drafted at the Windsor Tavern owned by Elijah West during a violent thunderstorm, and was adopted by the delegates after four days of debate. The delegates set the time for a meeting one month later.

Thomas Young of Philadelphia, a supporter of the delegates who wrote a letter advising them on how to achieve statehood. On June 2, a second convention of 72 delegates met at Westminster, known as the "Westminster Convention." At this meeting, the delegates adopted the name "Vermont" on the suggestion of Dr. For the first six months of the republic's existence, the state was called New Connecticut. On January 18, 1777, representatives of the New Hampshire Grants convened in Westminster and declared their land an independent republic.

This resulted in the deaths of Daniel Houghton and William French in the "Westminster Massacre.". When a New York judge arrived in Westminster with New York settlers in March 1775, violence broke out as angry citizens took over the courthouse and called a sheriff's posse. In 1770, Ethan Allen—along with his brothers Ira and Levi, as well as Seth Warner—recruited an informal militia, the Green Mountain Boys, to protect the interests of the original New Hampshire settlers against the new migrants from New York. The grants sparked a dispute with the New York governor, who began granting charters of his own for New Yorker settlement in Vermont.

The situation resulted in the New Hampshire Grants, a series of 135 land grants made between 1749 and 1764 by New Hampshire's colonial governor, Benning Wentworth. This still left New Hampshire and New York with conflicting claims to the land. In 1741, George II ruled that Massachusetts's claims in Vermont and New Hampshire were invalid and fixed Massachusetts's northern boundary at its present location. The Province of New Hampshire also claimed Vermont based upon a decree of George II in 1740.

The Province of New York claimed Vermont based on land granted to the Duke of York (later King James II) in 1764. The Province of Massachusetts Bay claimed the land on the basis of the 1629 charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Three colonies laid claim to the area. A fort at Crown Point had been built, and the Crown Point Military Road streched from the east to the west of the Vermont wilderness from Springfield to Chimney Point, making traveling from the neighboring British colonies easier than ever before.

The end of the war brought new settlers to Vermont. Following France's loss in the French and Indian War, the 1763 Treaty of Paris gave control of the land to the British. The British renamed the fort Fort Ticonderoga (which became the site of two later battles during the American Revolutionary War). Fort Carillon on the New York-Vermont border, a French fort constructed in 1755, was the site of two British offensives under Lord Amherst's command: the unsuccessful British attack in 1758 and the retaking of the following year with no major resistance (most of the garrison had been removed to defend Quebec, Montreal, and the western forts).

During the French and Indian War, some Vermont settlers, including Ethan Allen, joined the colonial militia assisting the British in attacks on the French. The second British settlement was the 1761 founding of Bennington in the southwest. These settlements were made by the Province of Massachusetts Bay to protect its settlers on the western border along the Connecticut River. This fort protected the nearby settlements of Dummerston and Brattleboro in the surrounding area.

The first permanent British settlement was established in 1724 with the construction of Fort Dummer in Vermont's far southeast under the command of Lieutenant Timothy Dwight. One year later a group of Mohawks burnt the settlement to the ground, leaving only chimneys and giving the area its name. The French were driven out of the area and retreated to other forts along the Richelieu River. Frédéric four times between 1755 and 1758; in 1759 a combined force of 12,000 British regular and provincial troops under Sir Jeffrey Amherst captured the fort.

The British attempted to take the Fort St. The government encouraged French colonization, leading to the development of small French settlements in the valley. The fort, when completed, gave the French control of the New France/Vermont border region in the Lake Champlain Valley and was the only permanent fort in the area until the building of Fort Carillon more than 20 years later. Here they constructed a small temporary wooden stockade (Fort de Pieux) on what was Chimney Point until work on Fort St. Frédéric began in 1734.

In 1731, the French arrived. This settlement and trading post was directly across the river from Crown Point, New York (Pointe à la Chevelure). In 1690, a group of Dutch-British settlers from Albany under Captain Jacobus de Warm established the De Warm Stockade at Chimney Point (eight miles west of Addison). During the later half of the 17th century, non-French settlers began to explore Vermont and its surrounding area.

This was the first European settlement in Vermont and the site of the first Roman Catholic mass. France claimed Vermont as part of New France, and erected Fort Sainte Anne on Isle La Motte in 1666 as part of their fortification of Lake Champlain. On July 30, 1609, French explorer Samuel de Champlain claimed the area of what is now Lake Champlain, giving to the mountains the appellation of les Verts Monts (the Green Mountains). The first European to see Vermont is thought to be Jacques Cartier, in 1535.

The population in 1500 is estimated to be around 10,000 people. Sometime between 1500 and 1600, the Iroquois drove many of the smaller native tribes out of Vermont, later using the area as a hunting ground and warring with the remaining Abenaki. From 1000 BCE to 1600 CE was the Woodland Period, when villages and trade networks were established, and ceramic and bow and arrow technology was developed. During the era Native Americans migrated year-round.

From 7000 to 1000 BCE was the Archaic Period. Between 8500 to 7000 BCE, glacial activity created the Champlain Sea, and Native Americans inhabited and hunted in Vermont. The western part of the state was originally home to a small population of Algonquian-speaking tribes, incuding the Mohican and Abenaki peoples. Little is known of the pre-Columbian history of Vermont.

The highest recorded temperature was 105 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius), at Vermon on July 4, 1911; the lowest recorded temperature was –33 degrees Fahrenheit (–36 degrees Celsius), at Bloomfield on July 4, 1933. That this famous display occurs so abundantly in Vermont is not due so much to the presence of a particular variant of the tree; it rather results from a number of soil and climate conditions unique to the area. In the autumn, Vermont's hills experience an explosion of red, orange and gold foliage caused by the sugar maple. Annual snowfall averages between 60 to 100 inches depending on elevation, giving Vermont some of New England's best cross-country skiing areas.

The northern part of the state, including the rural northeastern section (dubbed the "Northeast Kingdom") is known for exceptionally cold winters, often averaging more than ten degrees (F) colder than the southern areas of the state. Vermont is known for its brief mud season in spring followed by a cool summer and a colorful autumn, and particularly for its cold winters. About 77 percent of the state is covered by forest, the rest in meadow, uplands, lakes, ponds and swampy wetlands. Several mountains do have timberlines: Mount Mansfield, the highest mountain in the state and Killington are two examples.

In the northwest off Lake Champlain is the fertile Champlain Valley. In the south of the valley is Bomoseen Lake. In the southwest portion of the state are the Taconic Mountains; the White Mountains are in the northeast. The Green Mountains, so named because their relatively low altitude allows for little timberline, form a north-south spine running the most of the length of the state, slightly west of its center. The state's geographic center is Washington, three miles east of Roxbury.

Its greatest width, from east to west, is 89 miles (the narrowest width is at 37 miles). The state's greatest length, from north to south, is 159 miles. Lake Champlain, the major lake in Vermont, is the sixth-largest body of water in the United States and separates Vermont from New York and Canada in the northwest portion of the state. The west bank of the Connecticut River marks the eastern border of the state with New Hampshire (the river itself is part of New Hampshire).

Vermont is located in the New England region in the eastern United States and comprises 9615 square miles (24,902 km²), making it the 45th largest state. Of this, land comprises 9249 square miles (23,955 km²) and water comprises 366 square miles (948 km²), making it the 43rd largest in land area and the 47th in water area. The state capital is Montpelier, while the largest city is Burlington. Famous for its scenery, dairy products and maple syrup, Vermont has long been known for its liberal politics and staunchly independent political thinking. Vermont became the 14th state to join the United States, following a brief period of independence during and after the Revolutionary War.

Settlers who held land titles granted by the Province of New Hampshire, through their Green Mountain Boys militia, eventually prevailed. For many years, rightful control of the area was disputed by the surrounding colonies. Originally inhabited by Native American tribes (Iroquois, Algonquian and Abenaki), the territory that is now Vermont was claimed by France but became a British possession after France's defeat in the French and Indian War. It borders Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the north.

As the only New England state not to have a coastline along the Atlantic Ocean, Vermont is noted mainly for the Green Mountains in the west and Lake Champlain in the northwest. The state ranks 45th in land area (24,923km²), and its population (608,827) ranks as the second smallest of the fifty states. state located in New England. Vermont is a small U.S.

ISBN 0899333222. DeLorme: 2000. Vermont Atlas & Gazetteer. Chelsea Green Publishing Company: 2000. ISBN 1890132748.

Fast Lane on a Dirt Road: A Contemporary History of Vermont. Sherman, Joe. ISBN 1566261953. McGraw-Hill: 1998.

Country Towns of Vermont. Rodgers, Steve. Link (http://www.adherents.com/loc/loc_vermont.html). "Religion in Vermont." Adherents.com.

Hunter, Preston. ISBN 0934720495. Vermont Historical Society: 2004. Freedom and Unity: A History of Vermont.

Jeffrey, et al. Potash, P. ISBN 0874519365. University Press of New England: 1999.

The Story of Vermont: A Natural and Cultural History. Trombulak. Klyza, Christopher McGrory, and Stephen C. ISBN 0881505196.

Countryman Press: 2002. Vermont: An Explorer's Guide. Grant, Kim, et al. ISBN 1584650869.

University Press of New England: 2003. The Vermont Encyclopedia. Duffy, John J., et al. ISBN 1892724081.

American Historical Press: 2000. Vermont: An Illustrated History. Duffy, John J., et al. ISBN 0881503495.

Countryman Press: 1995. Full Duty: Vermonters in the Civil War. Coffin, Howard. ISBN 0756600863.

DK Publishing: 2004. Vermont 24/7. Cohen, David Elliot, and Rick Smolan. ISBN 0262011751.

MIT Press: 2000. Hands on the Land: A History of the Vermont Landscape. Albers, Jan. Johnsbury Regional Correctional Facility.

St. Southern State Correctional Facility. Southeast State Correctional Facility. Northwest State Correctional Facility.

Northern State Correctional Facility. Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility. Dale Women's Facility. Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility.

Caledonia Community Work Camp. Woodbury College. Vermont Technical College. Vermont Law School.

University of Vermont. Trinity College (Vermont). Southern Vermont College. School for International Training.

Saint Michael's College. Norwich University. Middlebury College. Marlboro College.

Lyndon State College. Landmark College. Johnson State College. Green Mountain College.

Goddard College. Joseph. College of St. Champlain College.

Center for Cartoon Studies. Castleton State College. Burlington College. Bennington College.

8.8% French-Canadian. 9.1% German. 14.5% French. 16.4% Irish.

18.4% English. 24th in its proportion of females. 28th in its proportion of males. 39th in its proportion of people of mixed race.

29th in its proportion of American Indians. 48th in its proportion of Blacks. 49th in its proportion of Hispanics. 41st in its proportion of Asians.

2nd in its proportion of Whites. 49.0% male. 51.0% female. 1.2% mixed race.

0.4% American Indian. 0.5% Black. 0.9% Hispanic. 0.9% Asian.

96.2% White.