The Roeliff Jansen Historical Society
PRESERVING THE HISTORY AND HERITAGE OF THE ROE JAN COMMUNITY
Copake Falls circa 1900
0ur 2026 Summer Exhibition Opens
Saturday July 11th at 2pm!
Patriots, Plowshares & Post Roads: Chapters from our Local Journey to Independence.
See the Exhibition!
Watch the video!
What made the American Revolution possible? Not just soldiers and generals—but mills, iron furnaces, farms, post roads, and ordinary people.
In recognition of our nation's 250th anniversary, the Roeliff Jansen Historical Society proudly presents Patriots, Plowshares & Post Roads: Chapters from our Local Journey to Independence,
Created to accompany the exhibition, this fully illustrated 18-minute introductory film—written and narrated by RJHS Board President Lesley Doyel—offers a fresh perspective on the American Revolution.
Rather than focusing solely on battles, generals, and military campaigns, Patriots, Plowshares & Post Roads explores the hidden infrastructure that made independence possible. Through the stories of iron furnaces, mills, post roads, tenant farms, taverns, textile production, and local industry, the film reveals how ordinary people, working landscapes, and networks of labor, transportation, and communication sustained the Revolutionary cause throughout the Hudson Valley.
The American Revolution was, in many ways, a tapestry of local actions, individual decisions, and community efforts that gradually merged into a coordinated movement for independence. Against the backdrop of the Revolutionary War, both the video and the exhibition tell the smaller—but no less significant—stories of innovation, self-sufficiency, and perseverance that helped lay the foundations of a new nation.
Exhibition opens July 11, thru October 2026. Running time: 18 minutes