Seth Warner

Seth Warner (May 17, 1743 - December 26, 1784) was born in Roxbury, Connecticut. In 1763, he removed with his father to Bennington in what was then the ‘New Hampshire Grants’. He established there as a huntsman.

Warner proved his qualities to the local community, and was elected Captain of the Green Mountain Boys, the local militia formed to resist New York authority over Vermont. With his cousin and the militia’s founder, Ethan Allen, he was outlawed, but never captured.

During the Revolutionary War, he fought on the side of the Continental Army, and made a mark in such engagements as the capture of Ticonderoga, the siege of Montreal and – most famously – the Battle of Bennington. In July 1776 he was made colonel of the army.

Then, in 1782, with his health failing, he returned to Roxbury. Warner was never skilled in financial matters, and failed to make money on land speculation like so many others in the new territories. At the end of his life, his wife Hester had to apply to Congress for charity. After a long delay a grant of 2,000 acres (8 km²) in the northeast of the state was made, the so-called Warner’s Grant. The grant, however, came too late; Warner had already been dead for four years.

Warner’s great-grandnephew Olin Levi Warner, was a well-known sculptor.