Museum Center has relics of the revolution that made us

It seems stunted, looking more like a slightly overgrown bracelet than an armband.

But its significance is considerable, encompassing something too massive to measure in inches.

The 216-year-old black silk piece was stoically stitched after George Washington died in 1799. For six months, U.S. soldiers mourned his passing by wearing commemorative adornments like the armband now on display at the Cincinnati Museum Center.

It's hard to imagine that a limb slender enough to wear this armband also raised arms against the world's most powerful empire. Against the most powerful military of its time. And won.

But that's exactly the insight, the vision that the armband and other museum center artifacts connect to the Revolutionary War. The relics are magic, resurrecting the people who gave us the reason for today's parades and picnics.

The collection contains objects from all stratum of the war effort. Those whose signatures are on the Declaration of Independence, the document today is dedicated to. And those small ones, too. The ones with the slight arms whose sacrifice founded a nation.

An extremely rare copy the Declaration at the center of Fourth of July is also on display as part of the "Treasures of Our Military Past" exhibit. It is one of four known remaining broadsides printed by John Holt on July 9, 1776.

The first section of "Treasures of Our Military Past" also includes a revealing correspondence from Thomas Jefferson, one of the architects of the Declaration.

Then the governor of Virginia, Jefferson penned a plea to Col. John Fitzgerald for war supplies June 9, 1780. He desperately requested cartridges and cartridge papers, promising payment from his personal wealth.

For Cody Hefner, media relations manager, the hand-written letter is a window into the day-to-day realities of war, the waking worries of Jefferson's mind. He is concerned about the on-the-ground logistics of the battlefield, not just the lofty government ideals upholding the Declaration of Independence.

"The Declaration of Independence doesn't mean anything if the war isn't won," Hefner said.

The war was won, the statement of independence leads to a new state. A united state, but a broke one, said Scott Gampfer, director of the Cincinnati History Library and History Collections.

So instead of payment for services, the new government offers Revolutionary War veterans from Virginia and Maryland property in the Virginia Military District, 4.2 million acres of what is now Ohio.

"Not everyone took them up on it," Gampfer said. "There were dangers on the frontier."

The archives includes 29 hand-drawn maps of district claims. No. 18 is on display in "Treasures of Our Military Past" and includes Anderson Township in Hamilton County and parts of Union and Pierce townships in Clermont County. Names are written in tight cursive on each of the future homesteads, then just squares and rectangles drawn on paper.

There's a Jones. Singleton. Taylor.

A more recognizable last name appears on a document displayed nearby: George Washington signed a land deed for one of these claims March 3, 1797.

The map illustrates how important the Revolutionary War was to the development of Cincinnati and Ohio, Gampfer said. Many of the early American settlers were war veterans.

"If the revolution had turned out differently, the whole history of the west, here, would have been completely different," he said.

And those early settlers brought what was then mementos of the war with them. Now, we call those keepsakes history.

Those settlers included General Josiah Harmar, who led the construction of Fort Washington. It's believed that he brought with him the 1770s-era regimental flag which now hangs in the Cincinnati History Museum.

It's one of the few surviving flags of its kind that were made for the first American troops.

And it's even older than Old Glory at the Smithsonian.

Want to visit?

Museum hours are regular for the Fourth of July: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday. For more, visit https://www.cincymuseum.org/.