America 250: Revolutionary Choices: Patriotism, Loyalism, Neutrality, and The Fate of the American Revolution

Please join us as Dr. Jonathon Awtrey speaks about the origins of the American Revolution and will consider how and why Anglo-Americans chose to side with the Patriots or Loyalists or to remain neutral. What consequences did Anglo-Americans face for such revolutionary decisions? Why did a Jewish Freemason with close ties to Benjamin Franklin and George Washington lose his fortune and find himself exiled from Pennsylvania? What happened to him and why? Why did Quaker leaders lose political power after trying to remain neutral when hostilities broke out? What happened to those who remained loyal to the British Crown and Parliament? Why was Thomas Brown, a Loyalist, scalped by his Patriot neighbors? What happened to him after the war was over? Why did some American Indians side with the Americans, while others sided with Great Britain? Why did some Indians try to remain neutral? What was their fate and why? Why did enslaved African Americans fight for the British or the Americans? Why did some free Blacks choose Patriotism, while others chose to remain loyal? What impact did the signing of the Declaration of Independence have on such choices? We often forget that the American Revolution did not always produce household names with heroic legacies. Instead, this talk will grapple with the fate of ordinary Anglo-Americans, whose choices during the American Revolution determined their futures--for good and for bad. 

Co-sponsored by Wilton Library and the Drum Hill Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. 

Registration required but walk-ins are welcome as space allows. Register online or call 203-762-6334.

Dr. Jonathon Awtrey holds history degrees from the University of West Georgia (’07 and ’09) and Louisiana State University (2018). Dr. Awtrey has taught at numerous institutions in Georgia, Louisiana, and New England, where he is currently Assistant Professor of the Practice at Fairfield University. Since 2021, Dr. Awtrey has taught courses on the American Revolution, American Sexuality, and Western Civilizations. Professor Awtrey’s scholarship investigates how classical history informed the ideas of the American Revolutionaries and how and why Jewish migrants to North America crafted social networks across the Atlantic world. More recent work has explored Jewish Freemasons in the eighteenth century and how and why Jewish partisans utilized print culture to craft reputations of honor as masculine defenders of republican idealism. Fellowships and research grants from American Jewish Historical Society, American Jewish Archives, Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, LSU, Fairfield University, and the American Philosophical Society have supported Dr. Awtrey’s research and writing.