After the death of Colonel Brush, Mrs. Brush, by whom he had but a single child, married Mr. Edward Wall, and removed with him to the township of Westminster, in Vermont. The position chosen by him for his residence, was one of the most beautiful and picturesque in that section of the fertile valley of the Connecticut. The settlement in that town, is one of the oldest and best cultivated in the State; and the society of that portion of the new district, which had originally been settled as part of the "New Hampshire grants," excelled, as it preceded others, in comforts and refinement. Such was at least the wealth and position of Mr. Wall, that he spared no expense in the education of his daughter, Miss Brush, who was sent to the capital of New England to complete her accomplishments. She was in her eighteenth year when Ethan Allen, liberated from the Tower of London, returned to his native State, with the fame of his daring deeds not a little exalted by reports of his sayings and doings beyond the water. Among other reports which probably had very little foundation, it was said that he had bit off a tenpenny nail while in the Tower of London. "I should like," said Miss Brush, one evening, in a mixed company in her father's parlor, "above all things to see this Mr. Allen, of whom we hear such incredible things."
This saying reached the ears of Allen, who soon after paid a visit to the house of Mr. Wall, and was introduced to Miss Brush. There was mutually an agreeable surprise. Both were manifestly pleased with the tone of thought and conversation, which ran on with a natural flow, and developed traits of kindred sympathies of intellect and feeling. It was late in the evening before Mr. Allen rose. He had not failed to observe the interest his conversation had excited in Miss Brush. "And now," said he, as he stood erect before her, and was about to depart--"and now, Miss Brush, allow me to ask, how do you like 'this Mr. Allen?"
This was the initiative to an offer which resulted in the marriage of the parties. Mrs. Allen was a woman of more than the ordinary intellectual endowment; bold, striking, and original in her conceptions, and of singular facility and clearness in her expression. She was educated from early life to disbelieve in the capacity or general intelligence of the masses for efficient self-government. All her prejudices were nurtured in favor of the British Constitution as developed by Magna Charta, and administered by a king and ministers responsible to the nation; which form of government she believed to be above all comparison the best in the world. Yet, in spite of all these deeply-rooted prejudices, with a grasp of thought that could look at and examine questions of inherent right, on their original basis--with the abiding principles of the Christian faith to serve as a guide in judging of human duty in governments, and with the daily recurring practical examples of the conflicts of opinion between the Colonies and the mother country, which the American Revolution presented, she saw and acknowledged the wrongs inflicted on the Colonies--the justice of that cause in which they had, at length, banded for a higher measure of liberty, and the growing capacity of the people to maintain those rights, both by the sword and the pen. She was thus made an intellectual convert to the doctrines of the Revolution, and became a most useful and capable counsellor to Allen, in the subsequent critical periods of his life. Her mind was, indeed, a counterpart, in its boldness and originality, to that of her husband, whose intuitive mode of reaching conclusions enabled him to put into the shape of acts, what it might have sorely puzzled him sometimes to reason out; and what, indeed, if he could have reasoned ever so well, his bold and fiery zeal, and crushing rapidity of action, put him out of all temper to submit to the slow process of ratiocination. He also felt the happy influences of manners, opinions, and sentiments at once dignified and frank, yet mild and persuasive.