George Washington’s Relics and Revolutionary War Memory

Join us for the second talk in our America 250 lecture series, Creating and Commemorating Our Nation, which will run through the summer and early fall of 2026, welcoming Dr. Jamie L. Brummit of UNC-Wilmington, author of Protestant Relics in Early America (Oxford University Press, 2025)! This talk is free and open to the public and will be held in the Alice's third floor ballroom. Refreshments will be served.

In this talk, Dr. Brummitt explores how early Americans remembered George Washington by collecting his relics. It features locks of Washington’s hair, postmortem lithographs, mourning embroideries, coffin fragments, images of Washington’s embodied soul rising to heaven from Mount Vernon, and more. The talk considers how these Washington relics related to broader trends in Protestant mourning practices for the father of the American republic. It also explains how relic practices for Washington and other heroes of the American Revolution transformed through the…