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Showing 41–50 of 1335 results for Virtual Tour of Washington's Field Headquarters

Cost of Revolution: Part 1 St. George’s Ireland

Richard Mansergh St. George grew up in the 1750s as a member of one of Ireland’s wealthy, Protestant, land-owning families. At the time, Ireland was part of the British Empire and under the rule of the British Crown. The Irish Parliament and the Lord Lieutenant (who represented the British monarch) governed the country, but the British Parliament could also make laws for Ireland. Members of the Protestant Church of Ireland dominated the country’s social, economic, and political power. St. George’s family belonged to this minority of the Irish population, which became known as the “Protestant Ascendancy.” His family owned thousands of acres of Irish land and accumulated money from rents paid by tenant farmers. Richard Mansergh St. George’s grandfather, General Richard St. George, was a senior officer in the British Army stationed in Ireland and increased the St. George family’s prominence. As a boy in County Galway, Richard Mansergh St. George lived in medieval stone towers, rode horses through emerald green pastures, developed artistic talents, and learned to be a gentleman. As a young adult, he inherited his family’s land and the power it represented.

Virtual Exhibit

When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story: How Did Women Lose the Vote?: The Backlash

In November 1807, the New Jersey State Legislature stripped the vote from women, people of color, and recent immigrants. They redefined the property qualification to include all white male taxpayers. The preamble of the new act on election regulations justified the change by citing “doubts” that “have been raised, and great diversities in practices obtained throughout the state in regard to the admission of aliens, persons of color, or negroes, to vote in elections” as well as “the mode of ascertaining” voter qualifications. What did this mean? What had happened?

Virtual Exhibit

When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story: Martha Githens

At the age of 23, Martha Githens voted in 1807. She voted along with her father, older brother, and older sister. Martha Githens was the daughter of George Githens, the prosperous owner of a mineral spring resort hotel.

Virtual Exhibit

When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story: Upper Penns Neck Township, Salem County, New Jersey Poll Lists, 1800

Upper Penns Neck Township
Salem County, New Jersey
December 23 & 24, 1800
Ink on Paper

This poll list is from a December 1800 congressional election that was held at the home of Philip Souder, an innkeeper in Upper Penns Neck Township, Salem County. The election determined congressional office holders for the United States House of Representatives. We do not currently know the names of the town officers, including the judge, collector, clerk, and poll inspectors who presided over the election.

The poll list includes the names of 217 total voters. At least 29 of these voters are women, accounting for nearly 13 percent of the voters on the list.

Like the rest of Salem County, Upper Penns Neck Township voted Democratic Republican in December 1800. Most voters in the township supported Democratic-Republicans James Mott, Ebenezer Elmer, John Condit, William Helms, and Henry Southard for the United States House of Representatives.

Note: The names recorded on this poll list were written by an election official, not by the voters themselves. The spelling of each voter’s name on the poll list may be different compared to how that same person’s name is spelled in other historical records and by the Museum of the American Revolution.

Images: Salem County Historical Society

Virtual Exhibit

When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story: PLG - Chester Township, Burlington County, New Jersey, October 1807

Chester Township, Burlington County, New Jersey, October 1807

This is a transcription of a poll list from a state election held at a schoolhouse in Moorestown, Chester Township, in October 1807. This list of voters includes the names of 38 women that cast their ballots just one month before the New Jersey State Legislature passed a bill defining voters as white, male citizens. The closing of the electorate effectively stripped the vote from women and free people of color in New Jersey.

A number of voters on this list have yet to be identified. As the Museum of the American Revolution continues its research, please contact us if you know more about any of the voters. Share your research with us.

Virtual Exhibit

The Davenport Letters: January 20, 1781

James Davenport continued to serve with the Continental Army through the fall and winter of 1780, including witnessing the execution of captured British spy Major James André. He was back in camp at West Point, New York, in January 1781. As this letter indicates, winter encampments could be long, dreary affairs for an army of young men anxious for action or to return home. In this letter, James reflects on thoughts of desertion (writing that “we Shall go out of Camp without Leave & forget to return half of the time”), meager rations, and a lack of pay. Continental soldiers, just like British and Hessian soldiers during the war, were formally entitled to food, clothing, and payment as part of their military service. But in practice, the Continental government struggled to produce the money necessary to pay soldiers. Many went months or even years without receiving any, and by January 1781 James Davenport noted that it had been thirteen months since their last pay was received.

Virtual Exhibit

When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story: How Was the Vote Regained?: Redemption?

By exercising the right to vote, early New Jersey women influenced the woman suffrage movement of the 19th and 20th centuries. These later suffragists used the memory of the Revolution and the nation’s first women voters to ground their position in America’s founding and assert their right to equal citizenship. The story of early New Jersey’s women voters reminds us that progress is not necessarily linear and unending, but that rights and liberties require constant vigilance to preserve and protect. The suffragists of the 19th and 20th centuries fought to regain a right that had been taken from New Jersey women in 1807. This later activism vindicated the first generation of women voters and became part of these women voters’ legacy.

Virtual Exhibit

Picturing Washington's Army: Verplanck’s Point | 1st Connecticut Brigade

Take a closer look at the decorated tents of two Connecticut regiments. These tents paralleled a road that led from Verplanck’s Point to Peekskill, New York.

Image: Museum of the American Revolution, Gift of the Landenberger Family Foundation

Virtual Exhibit

The Davenport Letters: James & Isaac How Davenport's Letters

Browse a selection of more than a dozen letters written by natives of Dorchester, Massachuesetts, Continental Army soldiers, and brothers James and Isaac How Davenport during the Revolutionary War from 1778-1783. These surviving letters have descended through the Davenport family for generations. In the 1850s, the letters were transcribed into a ledger — those transcribed versions are the letters seen throughout. They are currently in the possession of a descendant of James Davenport.

Virtual Exhibit

When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story: Tableau Interactive

Here, three women gather at the Rocky Hill Inn in Montgomery Township, Somerset County, New Jersey, for a state election held on October 13-14, 1801. Two white women hold ballots to vote, as was the right of property-owning women in New Jersey. A woman of African descent, possibly as a voter, or possibly as the enslaved property of one of the other women, clenches her hand in her pocket.

Scenes like this one were not uncommon at polling places in New Jersey from the 1790s until 1807. Though little known today, New Jersey Laws of 1790 and 1797 held that: “All free inhabitants of this State of full age, and who are worth fifty pounds proclamation money…shall be entitled to vote for all public officers.” This included women and free people of color.

The tableau figures were made by StudioEIS with contributions from Carrie Fellows, Kirsten Hammerstrom, Scott Lance, Paul McClintock, Gabriela Salvador, Jana Violante, Janeen Violante, and Kalela Williams.

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