Ira Allen
In any case in 1791, Allen took advantage of the market forces at work and acquired most of the township of Coventry purchasing them at the tax vendue in Burlington from the collector, sheriff Stephen Pearl. Buel obviously hung on to his land down in Buel's Gore where he eventually settled 7 years later. But he quitclaimed his interest to 49 rights in the 2 northern Coventry land tracts and Allen became the sole proprietor. Allen also owned all the rights in Duncansboro (Newport Town) and Irasburgh, as well as land in Albany, Barton and Brownington. In February of 1792, John Kelly, a wealthy New Yorker with Vermont landholdings saw the handwriting on the wall for Allen, and alluding to his upcoming financial difficulties offered to purchase a few of Allen's holdings including Coventry. Allen refused, but found himself in even deeper financial difficulties the following year when he mortgaged all of his Coventry holdings to go on bond for 3500 pounds to finance an ultimately unsuccessful New York business venture of his nephew John Finch with Zenos Bradley.
James Whitelaw's 1793 plan of Coventry (1)
The summer of 1795 found Ira Allen pursuing other projects than the industrial development of Coventry. From 1795 to 1801, Allen was travelling abroad in Europe on a number of errands, including getting the British to build a canal on the Richelieu River and fomenting a rebellion in Canada. He spent more than a year in a French prison during this time. It was while overseas that Allen's fortunes crumbled. Whether from unscrupulous Vermont politicians and land speculators, or from bad business sense and timing, Ira Allen lost it all.
In March of 1798 while in London, Allen managed to sell the 2,000 acres of Coventry Gore to Samuel Bayard of Philadelphia for 1,600 pounds sterling. Bayard was a lawyer in London at the time prosecuting the British government under the Jay Treaty. Allen was in and out of British courts and French prisons and was in desparate need of funds to keep himself afloat. Four months later in July the first United States direct land tax was assessed. A federal tax of 2/7 of one percent was levied on all land in the United States. Writing from The Temple prison in Paris France, in October of 1798, to his wife Jerusha in an attempt to apprise her of all of his land holdings Allen explicitly states that he yet owns "fifty Rights in Coventry". It was the U.S. Land Tax which would be Allen's undoing. Apparently unable to make the tax payments, Coventry went up for sale at a tax vendue in May of 1801. The purchaser was one Jabez G. Fitch of Vergennes.