Founders in Motion

Where Washington and the founders wrote from, month by month, 1771-1783.

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Each portrait marks where that founder was writing from in the selected month. The map re-frames each month to fit whoever is on it: it tightens to a single city when the group is together (Philadelphia in July 1776) and opens across the ocean when the diplomats are in Paris, Amsterdam, and Madrid. Founders who wrote letters without a clear place of origin that month drop off the map.