This special issue of the MESDA Journal explores the American Founding through the objects people made, used, and remembered, and through the communities that gave those things meaning. The essays gathered here remind us that the Revolution unfolded in parlors and workshops, in taverns and studies, and within the intimate decisions of families and communities that navigated war, preserved traditions, and interpreted the world around them.

Three full-length articles will anchor this year’s volume. Emelia Lehman’s study of James Read’s annotated copy of Reasons for Establishing the Colony of Georgia explores how a single book linked a Pennsylvania lawyer to transatlantic networks of print, intellectual exchange, and the hopeful—if fragile—dream of an American silk industry. Her close reading of Read’s marginalia, written on the eve of revolution, sheds light on northern interests in Georgia’s early silk experiments. Martha Hartley’s article turns to Wachovia, tracing how the Moravians in Salem, Bethabara, Bethania, and surrounding congregations navigated the upheavals of war while attempting to preserve religious discipline, economic stability, and claims to neutrality. Emilie Johnson’s essay brings us to Monticello in 1781, where English silver, British cavalry, and Martin Hemings’s act of resistance in the face of British threats intersect in a foundational story that continues to hold different meanings for the descendants of enslaved and enslaving families alike.

The issue will also feature three “New Discoveries” pieces that highlight how individual objects came to carry Revolutionary memory. Ella Nowicki considers a Rockbridge County side chair long associated with Zechariah Johnston, revealing how exposed joinery and later family narratives transformed an ordinary object into a touchstone of Revolutionary remembrance. Mackenzie Strong revisits the pastel portrait of Adam Boyd, showing how artistic representations that framed Boyd as a Revolutionary figure obscured the fuller complexity of his life. Jennifer Downs presents the Kentucky Historical Society’s silk “Lafayette dress,” worn by Sarah Louisa Lane for the Marquis de Lafayette’s 1825 visit. Remade from an earlier wedding gown, the textile speaks to the settlement patterns and economics of one Kentucky family and to the ways Kentuckians remembered and celebrated their independence decades after the Revolution.

These essays demonstrate that the Founding era was a continuing process—one negotiated through books annotated in quiet studies, chairs cherished by descendants, portraits that shaped reputations, silver guarded in moments of peril, textiles transformed across generations, and the lived experience of the Moravians of Wachovia as they sought to sustain community amid war. By bringing such objects and voices to light, this issue invites readers to reconsider how the material world helps Americans, past and present, imagine their nation.

We hope you enjoy the issue.

Kim May
Managing Editor
[email protected]