Tickets on sale March 2026. Register your interest with an email to Renee Dumouchel: rdumouchel@wdsmuseum.org

This event takes place at Stratford Hall and Menokin in Virginia. Attend the full day in person, or purchase a virtual ticket for the roundtable discussion. 

We tend to remember the founders as marble men — monumental, unified, certain. The truth is messier and more interesting. The Feuding Founders Collective is a multi-site public history initiative that humanizes Silas Deane, John Jay, and the Lee brothers of Virginia — men who were in conversation, in collaboration, and sometimes in conflict with one another.

Presented in partnership with Jay Heritage Center (NY), Friends of John Jay Homestead, and Menokin and Stratford Hall (VA), this series destabilizes the one-dimensional portraits we’ve inherited and invites audiences to sit with the full complexity of these lives: the ambition and the insecurity, the idealism and the grudges, the smear campaigns and the shared cause.

In an era of weaponized media and public takedowns, these 250-year-old stories feel less like history and more like a mirror — and understanding how the founders navigated political polarization, character assassination, and the tension between principle and self-interest may be one of the most useful things the past can offer us right now. Three sites. Three perspectives. Not a story of heroes and villains, but of imperfect people trying to build something that had never existed before.

Stratford Symposium: The Lee Brothers

The Feuding Founders Collective travels to Stratford Hall in the Northern Neck of Virginia for a day focused on politics and Revolutionary ideals of a group of men working for the goal of Independence even if they didn’t always agree on how to achieve it. The Lee band of brothers—Richard Henry, Francis Lightfoot, William and Arthur—played pivotal roles in our path towards revolution and formation of an independent nation. Their power and influence would be tested as they came into political conflict with Silas Deane and John Jay. The program will include a round table discussion and tours of Stratford Hall and Menokin. 

About Stratford Hall 

Stratford Hall brings together people from around the world to experience two-thousand acres of natural and human history, preserved and presented so that we can all learn from the courageous struggles of our ancestors, taking inspiration both from what they endured and what they accomplished. There are few places in America where people can travel down small, rural roads to arrive at a vast site that preserves so many aspects of early-American life, from the Great House where the influential Lee family helped to forge a new nation, to the fields worked by enslaved Africans, to the waters of the rivers that fueled trade, to the ground, which still yields secrets about the people and animals that lived before. Come experience this extraordinary place and learn about a layered history that began millions of years ago—a history that continues to educate, inspire, and influence Americans to the present day. 

Attend All Three!

Each roundtable discussion will be livestreamed on Zoom. Attend all events onsite, online, or a combination!

Webb Deane Stevens Museum | Silas Deane:  May 16, Connecticut

Jay Heritage Center | John Jay: September 26, New York

Stratford Hall & Menokin | The Lee Brothers: November 14, Virginia