In February 1766, Strong moved his wife, Agnes, the daughter of John McCure, a wealthy landowner in Scotland who fled to America after being implicated in the Rebellion of 1715, and three small children, Asa, Samuel and Polly, to the new settlement in Addison.
John, Jr. was born four months after this arduous trip and was the first English child born in Addison.
On August 6, 1776, Strong, now 38, enlisted in the army to fight in the Revolutionary War; he served as private and commissary. On October 10, 1776, he received a commission as Captain in Colonel Ira Allen’s regiment.
Fleeing the southward march of General Burgoyne in June 1777, the family retreated to Dorset, Vermont, where they remained until the end of the war. During their residence in Dorset, Strong served in the Vermont legislature from 1779 to 1782 and was elected Assistant Judge for Bennington County in 1781.
After the war, the family returned to Addison, where Strong continued to be active in the governance of the region and the independent republic of Vermont. He was elected to the Vermont Legislature several times and served as the first Judge of Court in Addison County. He was a member of the Council in 1787 that worked on revising and re-enacting the State Constitution of 1786 and was a member of the 1791 Convention that adopted the Constitution of the United States and approved admission of Vermont to the Union as the 14th State.
John Strong died in Addison, Vermont in 1816, at the age of 78.