Raynham Hall Museum will host the traveling exhibition “American Revolution Experience,” offering visitors a look at the people and stories behind the nation’s founding ahead of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
A collaboration of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the American Battlefield Trust, the exhibition will be on display during the museum’s public hours through April 4, with an opening program scheduled from 1 to 2 p.m. on Saturday.
The local DAR chapter, which has longstanding ties to the museum, facilitated Raynham Hall’s selection to host the exhibit. The organization owned and maintained the Townsend homestead in the early 1900s before it became a town-run museum, and continues to hold meetings there.
“They had heard that there was this collaboration between their organization and the American Battlefield Trust to create a traveling exhibit to go to libraries, historical societies and museums,” Justinne Lake-Jedzinak, the museum’s director of education and public programs, said of the DAR.
Local chapter leaders identified a window for the exhibit to appear at Raynham Hall. It is fully funded by the partnering organizations, allowing the museum to host it at no cost.
It required minimal setup. Lake-Jedzinak described it as a “literal pop-up exhibition,” with displays arriving prepackaged and ready to install.
The exhibition features informational panels, digital kiosks and interactive elements designed to immerse visitors in the Revolutionary War era. While it covers major events and battles, its emphasis is on lesser-known individuals and everyday experiences.
“It devotes a lot of attention to exploring revolutionary people,” Lake-Jedzinak said. “These are people that even somebody who has studied history, such as myself and some of our educators who are helping to assemble the exhibit, were saying these were figures that we knew very little about or hadn’t even heard of.”
One of them is Winsor Fry, an enslaved man from Rhode Island who joined the Patriot forces as a teenager.
“He was somebody who had been an enslaved person, and he enlisted probably in his late teens and then essentially began his life as a freed individual in the Patriot forces,” Lake-Jedzinak said. “No one knows how he was manumitted.”
The exhibit’s digital kiosks give visitors the chance to explore these stories in greater depth, and including interactive maps that trace individual’s movements within the broader geography of the war.
Rather than bringing in outside artifacts, the museum will pair the exhibit with items from its own collection.
“By telling some of these stories and really drawing out more of these everyday experiences,” Lake-Jedzinak said, “I think that helps us to shed more light and bring more excitement to some of our objects that seem to be everyday objects.”
Kerin Harvey, regent of the Oyster Bay chapter of the DAR, said that the exhibition is part of a nationwide initiative tied to the semiquincentennial.
“So the national [DAR] organization collaborated with the Battlefield Trust, and they came up with this traveling exhibit,” Harvey said. “And so they paid for chapters across America to host this exhibit for 250 years of America.”
The exhibit was offered to local chapters across New York state, with guidance that it be hosted in community-centered spaces such as libraries or historic sites.
While it is in Oyster Bay, the Raynham Hall staff will oversee its day-to-day presentation. The DAR chapter will assist with logistics, including packing and transporting the exhibit to its next destination.
Harvey said the exhibit stands out because of its focus on personal narratives rather than just military history. “It’s mostly comprised of testimonies of people who were actually affected by the American Revolution,” she said.
Among the features are maps showing troop movements, and historical anecdotes that connect past and present. One example traces the origin of the phrase “bury the hatchet,” tied to symbolic acts of peace between Native Americans and colonists.
The exhibit also highlights the experiences of civilians, enslaved people and others often left out of traditional narratives. “It’s not just testimonies of, like, the soldiers, which seems to be what’s commemorated the most,” Harvey said. “It’s just the people who lived here.”
She added that she hoped visitors would come away with a stronger connection to the past.
“It’s like a personalized testimony of people who were there so that we can feel connected to them,” Harvey said. “Because it feels like, you know, 250 years was so long ago, but really, our lives are very similar.”
