Feuding Founders: The Untold Drama of Silas Deane, John Jay, and the Lees of Virginia
Schedule
Sat, 16 May, 2026 at 10:00 am
UTC-04:00Location
211 Main Street , Wethersfield, CT, United States, Connecticut 06109 | Wethersfield, CT
Advertisement
Tickets on sale March 2026. Register your interest with an email to Renee Dumouchel: [email protected]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.
Wethersfield Symposium: The Making of Silas Deane
How does a man of middling origins rise to become America’s first diplomat? The Wethersfield symposium focuses on the early lives and backgrounds of Silas Deane, John Jay, and the Lee brothers — what shaped them before they shaped the republic. What did it take for Deane to climb from a Connecticut schoolteacher to the halls of Versailles, and then plummet to disgrace? How did the Lee brothers leverage Virginia’s planter aristocracy into political influence, and how did their personal relationship drive or derail their decisions? How did Jay’s legal prowess and New York connections place him at the center of revolutionary diplomacy?
This is a day for people who want the real story—not the tidy one. Join us and fellow curious minds for a daylong adventure into the past. Walk the rooms of the Webb and Deane Houses first — stand where political debates unfolded, where military strategy was weighed, where Deane may have sat alone calculating his next move. Let the spaces work on you before the conversation begins. Keep the energy and the intrigue alive over a shared meal in the barn. Then hear from scholars representing each partner site as they paint a more layered, more human picture of Jay, the Lees, and Deane — their relationships to power and to one another. The day closes with a walk to the Wethersfield Cove Warehouse, guided by the Wethersfield Historical Society — the very waterfront where Deane built the merchant trade that launched everything.
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 24, New York
Stratford Hall & Menokin | The Lee Brothers: November 14, Virginia
Advertisement
Where is it happening?
211 Main Street , Wethersfield, CT, United States, Connecticut 06109Event Location & Nearby Stays:
Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.
