Peter Meyerhof presents The Legacy of 1776 "Liberty, Expansion, and Sonoma"

As a part of the Sonoma Valley Historical Society’s programing to commemorate the 250th Anniversary of the United States there will be two presentations both in partnership with the Sonoma Valley Community Center.

Dr. Peter Meyerhof will give the first part of a two-part series on The Legacy of 1776. This presentation is entitled “Liberty, Expansion, and Sonoma.”

The first presentation will take place February 26, 2026 in the Sonoma Community Center Andrews Theatre, 276 East Napa Street Sonoma. A reception will be held at 5pm with the presentation beginning a 6pm.

Meyerhof will reveal many little-known links between the Nation’s birth, Mexican California, westward migration, and the founders of Sonoma. He will explain the links between the American Revolution and the Anza expedition from Sonora to California, also in 1776. The events of 1776 will be correlated to subsequent struggles for independence in Mexico and later in Mexican Sonoma.

Meanwhile in the East, Thomas Jefferson played a major role in promoting to Americans, western migration and expansion of the country into the lands of the Indigenous people. He stated his concern about the control of California as early as 1783. The Declaration for Independence which he drafted in 1776 shaped the concept of unalienable natural rights and this in turn played an enormously important role in how settlers viewed westward migration and the eventual takeover of California in 1846.

Conquest was defined by unalienable rights that knew no political boundary, the rights by discovery, rights by treaty, constitutional rights, and even perceived rights by power. But all though this period there was an abiding belief in American exceptionalism and benevolence. The intersection of multiple quests for liberty with territorial acquisition have indeed defined our complex history from the beginning.

Join us for this interesting presentation about the intersection of the American Revolution and Sonoma’s history.

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