Left: an oil painting
of Hasbrouck House,
Washington’s
headquarters when the
Society was founded in
1783. Right: an image
depicting Gen. George
Washington giving
orders before the
Battle of Yorktown, the
decisive victory in the
Revolutionary War.
POPE
BENJAMIN THOMAS BY PAINTING problem is just going
through several genealogists
and trying to find a
direct descent from that
ancestor that fought in
the Revolution in the
Continental line.”
For Maupin, membership
was a no-brainer. His
father served as president
of the North Carolina Society, as well as president general of the
entire Society. That led Maupin to join at age 21 while a junior at The
Citadel, although it took him several years to fully participate.
The modern-day Society focuses much of its attention and resources
on education. It launched The American Revolution Institute of the
Society of the Cincinnati in 2014, with the aim of reforming history
education and ensuring the story of the Revolution and the accomplishments
of the revolutionaries are widely recognized.
“They don’t teach Revolutionary history that much anymore in
high school,” Maupin says. “That’s sad. Most history starts post-Civil
War. One of our missions is to showcase what our ancestors bled and
died for, and that’s the freedom that we have cherished so long.”
Anderson House, the Society’s palatial headquarters in Washington,
D.C., houses a library and museum for scholars and the public
alike to view a vast collection of artifacts and documents from the
Revolution.
“It’s absolutely eye-popping,” Lunger says. “We have books, but we
have an incredible source library where we have everybody’s letters,
original documents and things like that. We get some 6,000 scholars a
year that come to study in our library.”
The general Society and each constituent Society provide grants
for scholarly work and travel at many levels of education. Each year,
a son or daughter of a North Carolina Society member can be nominated
for a grant for a summer French exchange program. The general
Society also funds high-level Revolutionary scholarly work with grants
for multi-year research terms.
“We just want people to learn about the contributions and the
sacrifices we made,” Lunger says. “What people don’t understand is,
at the time of the Revolution, there was no freedom. You were either
The garden façade of Anderson House, headquarters of the
a subject under a church, under a dictator, or under a czar. There was
Society of the Cincinnati in Washington, D.C. Above: The original
no freedom in the world.”
library at Anderson House.
25
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM COURTESY OF THE SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI COURTESY OF THE SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI COURTESY OF THE SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI/ENGRAVING BY FELIX MASSARD AFTER LOUIS-CHARLES-AUGUSTE