Register your interest with an email to Suzanne Clary: jayheritagecenter@gmail.com This event takes place at Jay Heritage Center in Rye, NY. Attend the full day in person, or purchase a virtual ticket for the roundtable discussion. We tend to remember the founders as marble men — monumental, unified, certain. The truth is messier and more interesting. The Feuding Founders Collective is a multi-site public history initiative that humanizes Silas Deane, John Jay, and the Lee brothers of Virginia — men who were in conversation, in collaboration, and sometimes in conflict with one another. Presented in partnership with Jay Heritage Center (NY), Friends of John Jay Homestead, and Menokin and Stratford Hall (VA), this series destabilizes the one-dimensional portraits we’ve inherited and invites audiences to sit with the full complexity of these lives: the ambition and the insecurity, the idealism and the grudges, the smear campaigns and the shared cause. In an era of weaponized media and public takedowns, these 250-year-old stories feel less like history and more like a mirror — and understanding how the founders navigated political polarization, character assassination, and the tension between principle and self-interest may be one of the most useful things the past can offer us right now. Three sites. Three perspectives. Not a story of heroes and villains, but of imperfect people trying to build something that had never existed before. Rye Symposium: John Jay, Diplomat and Spymaster How did our earliest American diplomats accomplish their secret and very delicate assignments abroad? The Jay Heritage Center symposium will focus on the interactions of John Jay, Silas Deane and the Lee brothers, Arthur and William, as illustrated by the decipherable records and cyphers that they left behind. What was the Jay-Deane code and why is John Jay credited by the CIA as being the first chief of US counterintelligence? What controversy put Jay at the center of a legal defense of Deane’s actions in France? Learn firsthand about the security concerns that prompted the Lee brothers of Virginia to launch public accusations that Deane was a traitor. This is an experience for people who want to hear our whole history. Join us and fellow history lovers for a daylong exploration of 18th century political quandaries and fragile allegiances. Stand on the very spot where Jay looked out at the horizon during the Stamp Act and imagined a new nation and his own role in shaping it. Contemplate the contradictions he faced in seeking freedom from British rule while his family denied freedom to others who worked the land. Tour the historic Jay Estate gardens followed by lunch at the same place where Jay celebrated the end of the Revolutionary War and his negotiation of the Treaty of Paris. Then hear from scholars representing each partner site as they paint a more layered, more human picture of Jay, the Lees, and Deane — their relationships to power and to one another. T...
