Shining a light on 7 everyday founders

June 28, 2026

This week the magazine marked the semiquincentennial with our project Visions of America, a collection of stories by leading historians about some lesser-known but fascinating participants in the founding of the country. These seven everyday founders had their own ideas about what independence, freedom and liberty could lead to, their own visions of America.

Since their publication, the stories have drawn a wealth of comments from readers, some of which brought responses from the historians. They engaged with readers’ opinions and arguments, expressions of appreciation and questions about the characters’ lives and historical scholarship and methodology. Readers described how their ancestors experienced some of the events in the stories, while others shared their own knowledge of the era. Many found parallels between the conflicts of the Revolution era and our own: class struggle, separation of church and state, and the plight of the common soldier, among others.

The conversation is ongoing this weekend if you’d like to participate. For those of you waiting to read it in print, and to see how the immersive illustrations appear there, the magazine will be available on the weekend of July 4.

Read the stories here.

Illustration by Tim McDonagh

Visions of America: The Revolution as You’ve Never Seen It Before

For the 250th anniversary, The Times Magazine asked leading historians to profile founding-era Americans whose roles in the drama have been often overlooked.

FEATURES

A painting of an 18th-century scene in which five men in stand before a table, presenting a document to the man seated behind it, while rows of other men seated around the room observe.

The Many Founders of the United States

In the past 50 years, the way we tell the story of the Revolution has become dramatically more complex. Can it still inspire us all?

By Jane Kamensky

The Native Leader Who Tied His People’s Fate to the Patriot Cause

For the 250th anniversary, The Times Magazine asked leading historians to profile founding-era Americans whose roles in the drama have been often overlooked.

By Karim M. Tiro

The Radical Pacifist Who Inspired the First Armed Rebellion of the Founding Era

For the 250th anniversary, The Times Magazine asked leading historians to profile founding-era Americans whose roles in the drama have been often overlooked.

By Woody Holton

The Patriot Housewife Whose Plays Helped Push America Toward Revolution

For the 250th anniversary, The Times Magazine asked leading historians to profile founding-era Americans whose roles in the drama have been often overlooked.

By Kathleen DuVal

The Itinerant Preacher Who Helped Secure the Separation of Church and State

For the 250th anniversary, The Times Magazine asked leading historians to profile founding-era Americans whose roles in the drama have been often overlooked.

By Marjoleine Kars

The Man of Faith Who Heard a Righteous Call in the Founding Credo

For the 250th anniversary, The Times Magazine asked leading historians to profile founding-era Americans whose roles in the drama have been often overlooked.

By Annette Gordon-Reed

The Teenage Soldier Who Revealed How the Patriots Really Won the War

For the 250th anniversary, The Times Magazine asked leading historians to profile founding-era Americans whose roles in the drama have been often overlooked.

By Alan Taylor

The Enslaved Woman Who Sued for Freedom and Emancipated Herself

For the 250th anniversary, The Times Magazine asked leading historians to profile founding-era Americans whose roles in the drama have been often overlooked.

By Martha S. Jones

Oops, We Talked About Fight Club

This week, we also published a feature from Dan Brooks about his experience traveling to Phuket to attend a grueling Muay Thai kickboxing school, with photos by Thomas Prior. Even if you’re not particularly interested in mixed martial arts, the story is also about Brooks, 48, grappling with the vulnerability that comes with aging. He writes:

I told my editors that if they sent me, I would write about the global combat-sports phenomenon that is Thai kickboxing and my own experience of Tiger’s notoriously grueling training regimen. Secretly my plan was to discover that I was a natural, with a paradoxically strong work ethic I would use to outcompete other men and comparably sized women, despite being, through no fault of my own, 48 years old.

I didn’t want the formative experiences of my life to be behind me; I wanted to keep changing as a person and, as a body, to get better instead of worse. In other words, I wanted to resist the domination of age. Someday I may be elderly, and when I think about the vulnerability inherent in that condition, it seems similar to childhood in ways that make me want to put it off as long as possible.

Read the story here: