More than 60 objects destined for exhibit at the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown were on display from March 1, 2013 – January 20, 2014 in “Jamestown’s Legacy to the American Revolution,” a special exhibition at Jamestown Settlement. The exhibition examined the lives of Revolutionary War-era descendants of people associated with 17th-century Jamestown, colonial Virginia’s first capital.

The exhibition took place while work was underway on the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, which replaced the Yorktown Victory Center in late 2016. The artifacts featured in “Jamestown’s Legacy to the American Revolution” – a sampling of those later exhibited in the new museum – included furnishings, weapons, nautical items, documents, and commemorative objects. Among them were an American-made saber engraved with the owner’s name and the year 1776, a trunk owned by a Continental Navy shipbuilder, and examples of 18th-century Virginia currency.

Exhibition sections

The exhibition opened with “King George III’s Virginia,” illustrated with an eight-foot-tall portrait of the king in coronation robes. It was one of several portraits done by the studio of Allan Ramsay between 1762 and 1784. From the time he ascended to the British throne in 1760, George III worked to strengthen British administration in the American colonies, with his American subjects ultimately rising in opposition.

In pre-Revolutionary Virginia, agriculture and trade drove the economy. A section titled “Merchants, Planters and Farmers” profiled Mary Cary Ambler, widow of wealthy Yorktown merchant and planter Edward Ambler, , and their son, John Ambler II. The section also profiled Azel Benthall, a small planter and church vestry clerk on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. The Ambler family suffered serious financial reverses during the Revolution, while farmers like Benthall were better able to cope with wartime shortages.

The “Soldiers and Sailors” section featured Colonel Richard Taylor, who served with the First Virginia Regiment of the Continental Army, and Captain Edward Travis IV, who served in the Virginia navy. Most Virginians who fought in the war were either militiamen or soldiers of the Continental Line. Virginia’s small naval force operated chiefly to keep the state’s rivers and the Chesapeake Bay safe from the British navy and to assist in the transport of supplies for the Continental Army.

“Statesmen and Diplomats” highlighted individuals who supported the Patriot cause and the new nation as public officials. Arthur Lee served on diplomatic missions to Europe during the Revolution and later as a member of Congress. Richard Bland II was actively involved in events leading up to the Revolution, as a member of the Continental Congress and the Virginia committees of Correspondence and Public Safety. During and following the Revolution, General Joseph Martin served as Virginia’s agent for Indian Affairs, acting as a diplomat between the Cherokee and settlers who encroached on Indian lands.

The exhibition concluded with an overview of the career of George Washington, whose ancestor John Washington arrived in Virginia in 1656 and later sat in the House of Burgesses at Jamestown. Less than a decade after leading the United States to victory as commander of the Continental Army, George Washington reluctantly accepted the office of the first president of the United States. The exhibit features a life-size statue made in the 19th century by William James Hubard after an 18th-century work by Jean-Antoine Houdon. It portrays Washington as a modern Cincinnatus, the Roman farmer who left his land to fight for his country and, after victory as a general, returned to his farm as a man of simplicity and peace.

“Jamestown’s Legacy to the American Revolution” was supported with grants from James City County, Altria Group and Dominion Resources.