Land speculator, revolutionary, pamphleteer, politician, and empire-builder, Ira Allen was a key figure on the late eighteenth-century Green Mountain frontier. Based on his new book Ira Allen: A Biography, J. Kevin Graffagnino’s lively talk evaluates Allen’s checkered career and makes the case for including him in our picture of Vermont’s formative decades.

Born on Long Island and raised in Montpelier, Vermont, Kevin Graffagnino is a historian, author, and library leader with decades of experience in American and Vermont history. A graduate of the University of Vermont (B.A. 1976; M.A. 1978) and the University of Massachusetts–Amherst (Ph.D. 1993), he has held major leadership roles at historical institutions across the country, including the Vermont Historical Society, the Kentucky Historical Society, the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, and the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan.

He is the author or editor of 25 books on Vermont and American history, book collecting, and antiquarian maps and prints. His Vermont-focused works include The Shaping of Vermont, Vermont Voices, The Vermont Difference, Vermont Heritage, and most recently Ira Allen: A Biography and Vermontiana: An Annotated Checklist, 1764–1899 (2024). His scholarship has made a lasting contribution to the study and preservation of Vermont’s cultural and historical legacy.

This event is a part of the celebrations commemorating the 250th Anniversary of the Vermont Republic.