Feuding Founders: Wethersfield Symposium – The Making of Silas Deane

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.

Meet the men behind America’s founding in this daylong exploration of Deane and his relationship to John Jay and the Lee brothers. Tour the Webb and Deane Houses, then join a roundtable featuring historians from Jay Heritage Center (NY), Menokin & Stratford Hall (VA), and the Webb Deane Stevens Museum (CT). This is the first in a three-part series across three states.

How does a man of middling origins rise to become America’s first diplomat—then plummet to disgrace? How did the Lee brothers leverage Virginia’s planter aristocracy into political influence? How did Jay’s legal prowess place him at the center of revolutionary diplomacy? This is a day for people who want the real story—not the tidy one.

Begin with a guided tour of the Webb and Deane Houses—stand in the rooms where political debates unfolded and military strategy was weighed. Share a meal in the Webb Barn. Hear from historians representing each partner institution as they build a more layered, more human portrait of Jay, the Lees, and Deane—their relationships to power and to one another. The day closes at the Wethersfield Cove Warehouse, the very waterfront where Deane built the merchant trade that launched everything.

In an era of weaponized media and public takedowns, these 250-year-old stories feel less like history and more like a mirror.