My Revolutionary War

Heritage Breeds and Heirloom Seeds at Colonial Farms Today

I grew up in Pennsylvania, the kind of place where a weekend drive could end at a quiet state park with a sun-faded historical marker and a field that looked ordinary until you read the plaque. Years later, after more Revolutionary War road trips than I can count, some of the most vivid “time...

Box Pews and Graveyards: 7 Colonial Meeting Houses You Can Still Visit

I grew up in Pennsylvania thinking of churches as quiet places you visited for an hour and then left behind. Colonial meeting houses are something different. They were the beating heart of a town. A place to worship, yes, but also to vote, levy taxes, debate roads, read proclamations, and sometimes...

Stagecoaches and Dirt Roads

I grew up in Pennsylvania, and some of my earliest history “aha” moments had nothing to do with muskets or famous speeches. They happened on ordinary roads. A bend that suddenly made sense. A creek crossing where the ground still pinches down to the easiest ford. A mile marker half swallowed by...

Decoding Colonial Clothing at Reenactments

I still remember my first big Revolutionary War reenactment as a kid in Pennsylvania. I went for the musket smoke and the marching, but what stuck with me was the clothing. Not just the bright regimentals either. It was the everyday stuff: a woman in a plain wool gown stirring a pot, a farmer in a...

The Apothecary’s Cabinet

One of my favorite moments in a colonial town is that quiet second when you realize the past is not behind glass at all. It is sitting right there on a shelf. A squat ceramic jar. A stoppered bottle gone wavy with age. A handwritten label you can barely make out. In the 18th century, that was...

Shillings and Continental Currency: Understanding Colonial Money at Revolutionary Era Museums

The first time I stared into a museum case full of tarnished coins and brittle paper notes, I felt confident for about three seconds. Then the labels started stacking up: pounds, shillings, pence, Spanish dollars, “lawful money,” “Pennsylvania currency,” and that infamous phrase you have probably...

Beyond the Battlefield: Colonial Women’s Lives at Historic Homesteads

The first time I really felt the Revolution in my bones was not on a battlefield. It was in a cramped kitchen where the hearth heat pushed into the room like a living thing. The guide was talking about troop movements, sure, but my eyes kept landing on the everyday equipment: the iron pot hooks,...

Hoop Rolls and Ninepins: 5 Sites for Colonial Games Kids Can Play

One of my favorite tricks for keeping kids invested in an 18th-century day is simple: give them something to do that a child in colonial America would recognize instantly. Not a worksheet. Not a lecture. A wooden hoop rolling over grass, a set of pins clattering on a board, a bundle of sticks that...

Mastering the Trades: Colonial Blacksmiths and Printers

The first time I watched a blacksmith work the bellows, the whole shop seemed to breathe. The forge brightened, the iron took color, and a dead straight bar suddenly had a will of its own. A few minutes later, the hammering stopped, the smith quenched the piece with a hiss, and the smell of coal...

5 Overlooked Revolutionary War Skirmish Sites That Changed History

I grew up in Pennsylvania, the kind of place where you can stumble onto an unassuming historical marker behind a shopping center and realize you are standing on ground that once rang with musket fire. After decades of chasing down Revolutionary War sites, I have learned something that never stops...

Saltboxes to Georgians: Spotting Colonial Architecture

I have a habit that drives my family a little nuts. We will be strolling a quiet historic street, maybe heading toward a tavern or a riverside trail, and I will stop dead in my tracks to look at a roofline. Not the flowers. Not the cute shop window. The roofline. Once you start seeing colonial...

Hearth and Home: Colonial Cooking Museums

The first time I watched a cook crane a kettle over an open fire, I realized how much of the Revolution is hiding in plain sight, right there in the kitchen. Not in grand speeches or battle maps, but in the slow choreography of daily survival: splitting kindling, tending coals, and stretching...

Beyond Independence Hall: Hidden Revolutionary Philadelphia Walk

I love Independence Hall as much as anyone. But if you have ever tried to squeeze through Old City on a bright Saturday, you know the feeling: shoulder-to-shoulder sidewalks, long lines, and the sense that you are experiencing the Revolution through the backs of other people’s heads. So here is my...

Exploring Fort Stanwix

The first time I walked through Fort Stanwix, it hit me the way a good battlefield does. Not with sweeping views or dramatic cliffs, but with angles. Bastion corners that force you to think like an 18th-century engineer. Low timber walls that make you realize just how close an enemy would have to...

Park Day Volunteering: Preserve Revolutionary War Battlefields

The first time I showed up to a battlefield workday, I expected something close to a ceremonial sweep of the visitor center parking lot. What I found instead was the real, unglamorous work that keeps Revolutionary War landscapes readable. Trail edges get reclaimed by brush in a single season. Stone...

Grab a Pint in History: 7 Revolutionary War Taverns You Can Still Visit

I grew up in Pennsylvania, and some of my earliest history memories are not from museums. They are from creaky floorboards, low ceilings stained by centuries of smoke, and the particular hush you feel when a building has heard too much to ever be truly quiet. Revolutionary War taverns were more...

Wheelchair-Accessible Revolutionary War Sites on the East Coast

I grew up in Pennsylvania on weekends spent chasing brown-and-gold historical markers, and I still travel the same way today, stopping wherever the road bends toward an old battlefield or a colonial town green. But over the years, one thing has become very clear: access is part of the story, too....

Following the Knox Trail

I grew up in Pennsylvania chasing historical markers the way other kids chased baseball cards. Somewhere along the way I learned a simple truth: you can read about the American Revolution for a lifetime, but the story changes when you stand where it happened. Few road trips deliver that feeling...

A Weekend at Fort Ticonderoga

The first time I drove up to Fort Ticonderoga, I understood why people in the 1700s fought so hard over this place. The land pinches down between Lake Champlain and Lake George, and the fort sits right where the north and south want to shake hands. You can feel the geography doing the talking. This...

Exploring Guilford Courthouse

Some battlefields feel like wide-open stages. Guilford Courthouse feels like a story whispered through trees. The first time I walked it, I remember thinking, this is exactly why Nathanael Greene was so hard to beat . He did not need to win the day in a clean, dramatic rout. He needed to make the...