With the country’s 250th Fourth of July celebration fast approaching, Bob Hannum was on a sprint to make sure four of Vermont’s Revolutionary War monuments were clean and Instagram-ready.
A professional conservator for 50 years and owner of Arts Management Services in Barre, Hannum got an assignment this spring from the state Division for Historic Preservation to polish up memorials in Burlington, Westminster, Tinmouth and Hubbardton. For road trippers keen on history, checking out his work offers a perfect tour to learn more about Vermont people and places linked to the Revolution. (Click here for other Revolutionary road trips.)
Hannum began in May with Ethan Allen, the state’s best-known hero of the Revolution. The leader of the Green Mountain Boys, who took Fort Ticonderoga in 1775 without firing a shot, is remembered in the Queen City with a towering monument at his grave in Greenmount Cemetery.
Hannum, who specializes in outdoor sculpture cleaning and repair, said the 35-foot-tall granite column topped by an 8-foot-tall marble statue hadn’t been cleaned in 160 years — that is, never.
“It was dark gray from all the mold and dust and dirt,” Hannum said of his first glimpse of the marble statue from a crane bucket. The monument was erected between 1858 and 1873; all four, in fact, date from nearly a century after the historic moments they commemorate.
At the Allen monument’s base, rust had corroded the decorative iron fencing, which resembles rows of standing muskets anchored at the corners by upright cannon barrels. Hannum shuns chemicals and detergents; he restored the marble’s gleam with a steam cleaner and brushes with organic bristles. He used a biocide spray and water pressure on the more durable granite. The fencing got a scraping and an enamel paint job.
Allen is also linked to Hannum’s next job, a modest obelisk in Westminster Old Cemetery, 130 miles southeast of Burlington. Allen and his Green Mountain Boys came to restore order after the so-called 1775 Westminster Massacre, in which British-appointed New York officials fired on Vermont protesters gathered inside the courthouse. But Allen’s homegrown militia didn’t arrive soon enough to save William French and Daniel Houghton. French is considered the first fatality of the American Revolution, which began a month later in Lexington and Concord. Houghton died hours later from his wounds. Both men are commemorated on bronze plaques on the obelisk.
“The monument looks incredible,” Jessie Haas, president of the Westminster Historical Society, said of Hannum’s daylong restoration job. The conservator polished the bronze plaques’ letters to a shine and coated them with a long-lasting polymer.
Hannum had to delay his final two cleaning jobs because the U.S. Department of State called him to Greece. The conservator has installed and restored outdoor sculptures for the department at American embassies around the world. The Athens embassy needed a remediation assessment of a 70-foot-long sculptural water feature by late Vermont artist Michael Singer. Hannum installed the work 20 years ago.
He returned to Vermont after the one-day gig to complete his work on a newly gleaming obelisk honoring Revolutionary War soldier Nathaniel Chipman. Located in Tinmouth, on the western edge of Vermont, the Chipman monument not only honors his military service — he survived a Pennsylvania battle and the winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge — but also his notable postwar career as chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, an advocate for Vermont statehood and a U.S. senator.
From Tinmouth, it’s a 40-minute drive north to Hubbardton, site of the only Revolutionary War battle fought in Vermont. (The Battle of Bennington actually took place just over the border in New York.) Veterans and eyewitnesses to the 1777 battle rallied early to preserve the site, and its views remain largely unchanged. Thanks to Hannum, the marble obelisk on the hilltop will look as dazzling as it did when it went up in 1859. ➆
This article appears in July 1 • 2026.
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