YORKTOWN, Va. — Jim Gallagher is a volunteer at the American Revolution Museum and a descendant of nine Patriots who participated in the Revolutionary War.
Gallagher said some of his ancestors were combatants on the battlefield, while others on his family tree believed the pen was mightier than the sword.
"Out of all of my direct relatives, I would say the most famous is Richard Bland who was my fifth great-grandfather," he said.
Gallagher said Bland, a writer, helped draft the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the Virginia Constitution of 1776.
Gallagher said the museum gives guests and staff a great sense of what life was like during the American Revolution from the clothes colonists wore to their sleeping quarters.
Virginia had several roles in the Revolutionary War aside from the Siege of Yorktown," Gallagher said.
"Virginians were the first to come up with the idea to come up with Committee of Correspondents, where the different colonies would communicate with each other and share information it was really the first internet," explains Gallagher.
Alicia Klimenko, an interpreter at the museum, said Virginia followed a famous boycott executed by Boston colonists.
"There was actually a smaller tea party that occurs here in Virginia it happens a little bit after the big tea party that happens up in Boston and it's sort of a reaction to that," said Klimenko.
"And Thomas Nelson led a group of patriots down to enforce the boycott and they dumped that tea in the York River," said Gallagher.
Gallagher said Thomas Nelson is a distant cousin of his but he says portraying him in costume is bittersweet.
"Doing Thomas Nelson or doing any of my ancestors comes with some embarrassment or some shame because they were slaveholders," said Gallagher.
Gallagher says he will openly discuss that dark part of history to remind guests that liberty and justice for all may have been a theme during the revolutionary war, but it wasn't given to everyone.
"The Declaration of Independence was an imperfect document but it was a dream," Gallagher said. "It was a dream that wasn’t realized the day after it was written and not for a long time that. But it’s a dream that persists that all men are created equal."
He said that he believes something truly American is remembering that.
