As you explore the American Revolution Experience traveling exhibit, learn more about the people you meet below. To continue to deepen your knowledge of the American Revolution later, visit The Liberty Trail website, sign up for a newsletter, or purchase a book of Revolutionary War Battle Maps.
An attractive socialite who secretly helped facilitate treason
Peggy is the first person you meet in the traveling exhibition and one of the most intriguing. Peggy Shippen Arnold had everyone fooled⏤even Alexander Hamilton⏤and the rest is history. Dive into her story here.
A loyalist who endured torture and eventually exile
Thomas Brown was left disfigured by a patriot mob when he refused to join them. What would you endure for a cause?
What would you endure to be with the love of your life?
Lucy Flucker bucked her family's expectations to marry for status and money and, instead, married for love.
A Mohawk leader aligned with the British
Thayendanegea (known to the British as Joseph Brant) knew the American Revolution was a civil war—in more ways than one.
What does liberty mean to you? What would you do to secure it?
William is the first person you meet in the Freedom or Slavery theme. What does liberty mean to you? What would you do to secure it?
A slave of George Washington who found freedom fighting for the loyalists.
Harry Washington emancipated himself from George Washington's Mount Vernon and began a new life in the Black Pioneers.
Leader of an integrated regiment that died on the battlefield
This fighting Quaker met a grisly death leading an integrated unit that promised freedom to enslaved soldiers.
Served throughout the War of Independence with "the spirit of true patriotism."
Thomas was a free Black man from Maryland who enlisted in 1778.
Supporting the patriot frontlines during the American Revolution
Sarah Benjamin, who met George Washington twice and lived long enough to have her picture taken leads off the On the Front Lines theme.
A young patriot who carried a drum instead of a gun
Stephen Tainter was barely 16 years old when he joined his first patriot militia unit. Instead of a gun, Stephen carried a drum.
Forced to choose a side
Everyone had choices to make during the American Revolution—some of those choices changed lives forever.
Personified the change of the Revolutionary era.
Lushington led a militia unit comprised mostly of Jewish soldiers and personified the change of the Revolutionary era.
The American Revolution wasn't just about thirteen rebellious colonies; it was a world war.
The American Revolution wasn't just about thirteen rebellious colonies; it was a world war. François Joseph Paul de Grasse, born in France, leads off the Help from Abroad theme.
An unlikely ally
Bernardo de Gálvez was no patriot. But like the patriots, he found an enemy in Great Britain. El enemigo de mi enemigo es mi amigo.
A Frenchman who mapped the Revolution
General George Washington described a map he had received from du Chesnoy as “executed with great accuracy and military intelligence.” Washington promised that the map would have “a place among the papers on which I set a value.”
Lady Riedesel provided a valuable account of the American Revolution.
Lady Riedesel was a prolific writer who provided a valuable account of the American Revolution. She wrote and published her memoirs of the Saratoga Campaign, leaving a primary source record that has been inestimably valued by military and social historians.
One of only 8 delegates who were British-born.
An English immigrant, Button Gwinnett risked his life by signing his name to the Declaration of Independence as a Georgian. He starts off the Post-War Lives and Legacies theme.
A veteran of over thirty battles in the War of Independence
Kirkwood was "a man who had passed through unscathed the fiercest conflicts of the Revolution, and who had faced danger and death in a thousand shapes." He died in the 1791 Battle of the Wabash.
Former slave fighting as a patriot, and navigating life in a new nation
Winsor Fry spent his first years as a free man fighting for American liberty. But what did life in the new nation have in store for him? In 2019, new research allowed his descendants to gather at a private cemetery in East Greenwich, RI to dedicate a new monument to his memory.
A veteran of two wars with a career that spanned nearly half a century.
Born in New Hampshire in 1751, when word came of the fighting at Lexington and Concord in April 1775 Henry Dearborn's militia unit marched to join the Patriot forces besieging Boston. Dearborn rendered military, civic, political and diplomatic service to the United States in a career that lasted 50 years.
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