In the Founders' Footsteps: Landmarks of the American Revolution

by Adam Van Doren, Nathaniel Philbrick (Preface by)

Overview

“Beautifully alive.”—Wall Street Journal
Winner of the 2022 Distinguished Book Award from The Society of Colonial Wars

A tour through the original thirteen colonies in search of historical sites and their stories in America’s founding. Obscure, well-known, off-the-beaten path, and on busy city streets, here are taverns, meeting houses, battlefields, forts, monuments, homes which all combine to define our country—the places where daring people forged a revolution.

There is always something new to be found in America’s past that also brings greater clarity to our present and the future we choose to make as a nation. Author-artist Adam Van Doren traveled from Maine to Georgia in that spirit. There are thirty-seven landmarks included, with fifteen additional locations noted in brief. From the Bunker Hill monument in Massachusetts to the Camden Battlefield Site in South Carolina, this is a tour of an American cultural landscape with a curious, perceptive, and insightful guide.

The reader steps inside cabins at Valley Forge where nearly two thousand soldiers perished during a cruel winter, meets the chef at Philadelphia’s City Tavern where the menu is based on 18th century fare, seeks out the Swamp Fox in Georgia, visits the homes of Alexander Hamilton, John and Abigail Adams, the Joseph Webb House on the Connecticut River where French general Rochambeau made plans with Washington, and much more. An unvarnished view, we also see Philipsburg Manor, in Sleepy Hollow, New York, where Blacks were once held as slaves to work in the Hudson River Valley.

For armchair travelers and anyone fascinated by Americana, Van Doren (The House Tells the Story: Homes of the American Presidents) has created an unforgettable journey through history. We see the Founders—both their stunning achievements and chilling moral failures—where they lived, fought, and agreed on a common purpose, to create a nation whose future—and legacy—is continually evolving.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781567926620
Publisher:	David R. Godine, Publisher
Publication date:	04/12/2022
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	398,292
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Adam Van Doren received his masters at Columbia Universityand has been a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. He teaches art at Yale University, where he is also an associate fellow, and has exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., among other institutions. His work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Wadsworth Atheneum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He is the author of The House Tells the Story: Homes of the American Presidents, The Stones of Yale, and An Artist in Venice. Mr. Van Doren lives in New York City.

Nathaniel Philbrick is the author of Travels with George, In the Heart of the Sea, winner of a National Book Award, Bunker Hill, and many other outstanding works of nonfiction.

Table of Contents

Foreword Nathaniel Philbrick 13

Introduction 17

Historic Sites

The Sweet Project

Hamilton Grange, New York City 33

A Living Museum

Colonial Williamsburg, Williamsburg, Virginia 39

Hallowed Ground

Bunker Hill Monument, Charlestown, Massachusetts 43

Fatal March

Benedict Arnold's Trail, Kennebec River, Maine

Major Reuben Colburn House, Pittston, Maine 49

Of Poets and Generals

Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters

National Historic Site, Cambridge, Massachusetts 55

Knox's Triumph

Dorchester Heights Monument, South Boston, Massachusetts

Henry Knox Trail, Great Barrington, Massachusetts 61

Where Freedom Rang

Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 67

A Narrow Escape

The Old Stone House, Brooklyn, New York 73

The Higher Ground

Morris-Jumel Mansion, New York City 77

Final Plea

Billop House (Conference House), Staten Island, New York 83

Turning the Tide

Nassau Hall, Princeton University

Clarke House Museum, Princeton, New Jersey 91

A Taste of History

City Tavern, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 97

House of War

Cliveden Manor (The Chew House), Germantown, Pennsylvania 103

Winter of Discontent

Valley Forge Historic Site, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania 109

The Great Chain

Hudson River Chain Monument, West Point, New York 117

A Dark Past

Philipsburg Manor, Sleepy Hollow, New York 123

Allies in Arms

Rochambeau Monument, Newport, Rhode Island 127

Without Mercy

Camden Battlefield Site, Camden, South Carolina 133

The Swamp Fox

Francis Marion Statue, Marion, South Carolina

City of Charleston, South Carolina 137

Planter Patriot

George Washington's Gardens, Mount Vernon, Virginia 143

A Family Legacy

Peacefield (John Adams House), Quincy, Massachusetts 149

Soldier Spy

Major John André Monument, Tappan, New York

Yale Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut 155

Meeting of Minds

Webb Dean Stevens Museum, Wethersfield, Connecticut 161

A Secret Setting

Poplar Forest, Forest, Virginia 167

The Crowning Victory

Yorktown Battlefield Colonial Historical Park, Yorktown, Virginia 173

Washington's Adieu

Fraunces Tavern, New York City 179

A Man for All Seasons

Franklin Court Printing Office, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 185

A Noble Gesture

Maryland State House, Annapolis, Maryland

Capitol Rotunda, Washington, D. C. 191

Voice of the People

Thomas Paine Plaque, New York City

Thomas Paine Monument, New Rochelle, New York 195

Hero of the Sea

Crypt of John Paul Jones, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland

John Paul Jones Historic House Museum, Portsmouth, New Hampshire 199

Appendices

Additional Landmarks Noted in Brief 207

Maps 214

Timeline 217

Who's Who 223

Acknowledgments 231

Select Bibliography 235

Editorial Reviews

Praise for In the Founder’s Footsteps

“An odyssey in words and pictures through landmarks of the American Revolution . . . Van Doren has a knack for revealing relics of the Revolution as strangely, beautifully alive.”
—Wall Street Journal

  “Van Doren’s project reminds us there is always something new to be found in America’s past that also brings greater clarity to our present, and to the future we choose to make as a nation.”
—Fine Art Connoisseur

“Van Doren’s watercolors give the book visual appeal, and the window it opens on the lives of these places, past and present, makes it worth keeping around.”
—The New Criterion

“The historian’s task is to give unnecessary attention to a thousand and one things and still give warmth to the narrative. Van Doren fulfills this task in excess, and his inexhaustible supply of enthusiasm gives life to his stories.”
—David McCullough, author of 1776

“This is not just a pretty book—though Adam Van Doren’s many watercolors are pretty indeed—but is wise and fascinating too, reminding us of events and way-stations that we well knew—Concord to Yorktown by way of Bunker Hill and Valley Forge—and of places and happenings we have long forgotten. The seven years of the Revolutionary War are retold with a measured sympathy—no jingoism here!—and we must be grateful for the images and words of a supremely able historian and artist.”
—Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman

“In this gorgeous volume, Adam Van Doren illustrates with generosity and wise beauty those places and “gentle phantoms”—from Bunker Hill to the Georgia swamp, from Phillis Wheatley to Thomas Paine—that helped create an American republic and inhabit it still. In Van Doren’s delicious, brilliant retelling, and in these luminous pictures, history walks again, upright, complex, and humane: Not to be missed.”
—Brenda Wineapple, author of The Impeachers

“Adam Van Doren has succeeded where so many histories do not, in conveying a vivid sense of the different places that gave rise to our hard-won independence. John Adams famously argued that the Revolution had to be won in the “minds and hearts” of the American people; this lovely book appeals to both.”
—Ted Widmer, author of Lincoln on the Verge

“In the Founders’ Footsteps is a visual and narrative revelation. It invites you to join Van Doren on a journey that he quite happily and gracefully illustrates for you. For history and architectural buffs, this is a feast. For any reader interested in a rare and wide-ranging road trip, this is their book.”
—Timothy L. O’Brien, author of TrumpNation

“Adam Van Doren’s charming watercolors and essays made me feel I was there. Through both pen and brush, Van Doren not only teaches us a good deal of American history but, more important, evokes it.”
—Anne Fadiman, author of Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

From the Publisher