Houses of the Founding Fathers

A riveting look at the private worlds of Hamilton, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and more
 
The hit Broadway show Hamilton has shined a spotlight on our Founding Fathers and the fascinating private lives of these men who helped create the modern world. In this breathtaking volume, historian Hugh Howard and photographer Roger Straus take us on an eye-opening tour of forty of the Founding Fathers’ stately homes. We see the uptown New York residence where Alexander Hamilton penned his “Statement of the Impending Duel” before his fateful meeting with Aaron Burr; Thomas Jefferson’s iconic Monticello; the mansions of Washington, Adams, and Franklin; and the homes of many other signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

At sites from Maine to Georgia, with stops in each of the thirteen colonies, the grand story of the Revolution emerges from unique and individual domestic perspectives. Houses overlooking the sea, in busy townscapes, or atop mountains reveal these patriots’ tastes in architecture, furniture, and horticulture. There are tales of friends and enemies, murderous relatives, reluctant revolutionaries, adoring wives, and runaway servants. The founding families are brought to life in the rituals of birth and death, the food they ate, the archaic medical practices they endured, their household arrangements, and the way their slaves lived.