WILLIAMSBURG.- When We Are One: Mapping America’s Road from Revolution to Independence opens on March 5 at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museums, one of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, visitors young and old will not only see the story of how our nation was created and its events surrounding the fight for freedom from a map-maker’s perspective. They will also learn fascinating facts that illuminate life and customs in the eighteenth century.

For example, did you know that glass could not be manufactured in pieces large enough to span the surface of a map that was larger than a single sheet of folio paper (about 24” by 19”)? Therefore, large wall maps were often pasted to linen and attached to rollers so that they were both lightweight and easily portable, such as the case of A MAP of the British and French Dominions in North America, a black-and-white line engraving with hand coloring made by John Mitchell, cartographer, and Thomas Kitchin, engraver, in London in 1755. The map measures 53¼ inches high by 76½ inches wide and is made up of several sheets of paper pasted together and attached to a large piece of linen.

Did you know that Paul Revere, one of the “Sons of Liberty,” was a silversmith, engraver and even briefly a dentist? He also ran a hardware business, operated a cannon foundry and produced gunpowder for the army. In 1770, after British soldiers fired into an angry crowd and killed five civilians, an event later called the Boston Massacre, Revere engraved this print of the scene (right), a black-and-white engraving with hand coloring entitled The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street Boston on March 5th 1770 by a Party of the 29th Reg[imen]t, based on an engraving by Henry Pelham. By showing eight British soldiers firing in unison at helpless civilians, Revere aimed to inflame tensions between the colonists and soldiers and became a popular piece of visual propaganda against British rule. Five civilians were killed in the Boston Massacre including Crispus Attucks, whose teapot (left) is also on view in We Are One. Attucks was likely an escaped slave, and he may have been of Native American, African, and European ancestry. Today, this teapot is not revered for its exceptional craftsmanship, but rather because it was owned by Attucks and thus serves as a reminder that ordinary people from all walks of life participated in America ’s struggle for freedom.

Did you know that the Continental Navy was established in 1775 with a fleet of seven ships? By the following year, the Continental Navy had 27 ships against Britain ’s 270 ships. Although the subject has not been identified, this Portrait Miniature of a Continental Naval Officer (right), a watercolor on ivory painted around 1776 in Boston, appears to be the earliest known depiction of an officer in America’s Continental Navy. (It is attributed to Joseph Dunkerley, one of the most important miniaturists of the Revolutionary War era. Born in England , Dunkerley came to Boston with British forces about 1775, but deserted to serve in America ’s Continental Army. He left military service in May 1778, but continued to paint miniatures for another decade.)

Did you know that it was fairly common for armed ships to carry printing presses to aid with communication? The fourteen articles of surrender agreed to at Yorktown by British General Charles Cornwallis determined such things as where the troops (now prisoners of war) were to be sent, how to care for the sick and wounded as well as details outlining the surrender ceremony. It is thought this pamphlet, Articles de la Capitulation (left), was printed on the press of the Ville de Paris, the flagship of French Admiral François Joseph Paul, Comte de Grasse, then in Virginia waters in 1781.

These are but a sampling of the approximately 90 objects on display in We Are One, which will be on view from March 5 through January 29, 2017. Organized by the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library, the exhibition is enhanced by more than 30 unique objects from the Colonial Williamsburg collections, many of which are on view for the first time or rarely seen, as well as from the exceptional collection of Richard H. Brown, some of which were not on view at the Boston Public Library. We Are One offers an extraordinary opportunity for map, rare manuscript and American history aficionados of all ages to witness how America ’s revolutionaries charted their course to independence.