Despite recent attempts to revert to simplistic and sanitized historical interpretations, Americans will continue to be exposed to an inclusive, nuanced depiction of the nation’s founding. Scholars will not accept the whitewashed narratives that the Trump administration is purveying. Equally important, an invisible army of genealogists, grassroots activists, and historians lacking academic credentials will continue to comb archives, special libraries, databases, and burgeoning online resources to uncover diverse and complex stories of the past. The toothpaste cannot be put back in the tube. 

There is no better example of this dynamic than For the Common Good: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation, a multi-part docuseries which tells the vivid stories of nine pioneering Pennsylvania women who made important contributions to the founding of the United States. Creation of the series was spearheaded by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (NSCDA/PA), an organization of women who have proven lineage to an ancestor who provided “service to the colony” prior to July 5, 1776.

21st century Dames recognized that this all-female group focused almost exclusively on the lives of Colonial-era men who held office or signed key documents. The NSCDA set a goal of adding the names of 250 women to their Register of Ancestors in honor of the America 250 celebration. National efforts have exceeded this goal, while Pennsylvania alone added 73 women, nine of whom are subjects of the For the Common Good films.

The Mother of Germantown

One of these women is Elin Kunders, among the first German Quakers to settle Germantown. When she and her husband Thunes left Krefeld, Germany for Pennsylvania in 1682 they were already parents of three children. Elin became pregnant en route. Their daughter Sarah was the first child born in Germantown. The Kunders’ home was one of the first buildings constructed in Germantown, and they labored with their neighbors to cultivate flax that was spun into thread and woven as cloth.

Trips to Philadelphia to sell this cloth revealed to the German Quakers a shockingly different society. Many 17th century British Quakers in Philadelphia relied on enslaved labor. Horrified by what they observed, in 1688, Germantown Quakers penned British North America’s first anti-slavery document. Their reasoning included high-minded ideals about the equality of all people and more practical considerations such as the fear that slavery would deter more immigration from Germany.

Although only men signed this anti-slavery petition, the new film imagines Elin’s centrality to its creation. Women were the planters of flax, spinners of thread, and sellers of cloth who witnessed slavery in Philadelphia firsthand. The 1688 document was signed at the Kunders’ home, and Quaker communities were open to women’s voices. Furthermore, archival research done by the For the Common Good team revealed the extent of Elin’s kin networks among the Germantown Quakers. Elin, who went on to have three more Pennsylvania-born children, can be considered the “Mother of Germantown.”

Discovering Dinah

Dinah, another colonial ancestor newly registered by the NSCDA/PA, is also one of the women profiled in the For the Common Good series. Dinah was a formerly enslaved woman credited with saving Stenton during the Revolutionary War. Stenton, former home of the prominent Logan family, has been stewarded by the NSCDA/PA since 1899. The Dames played a pivotal role in the development of a memorial to Dinah that was unveiled in 2024.

Piecing together life stories of individual 18th century women is challenging. The undertaking is much harder when the woman was enslaved, illiterate, and did not even have a recorded last name or date of birth. Despite the difficulties, researchers from Stenton found sporadic mentions of Dinah in records kept by women in the Logan family that owned and later employed Dinah. Likely inspired by her encounters with free Blacks and pervasive talk of universal rights, Dinah requested and was granted freedom in April 1776. Her manumission papers were found in the vast collection of the Haverford College Library, a treasure trove of Pennsylvania Quaker history.

Karin Wulf, the director and librarian of the John Carter Brown Library and a professor of history at Brown University, served as an advisor to the For the Common Good project. Wulf drew a parallel between slavery, in which the condition of the child depended on the status of the mother, and the use of genealogy among elite families to determine birthrights and connections. She refered to both practices as employing a similar “infrastructure of inheritance.”

In Wulf’s view, the For the Common Good series will be a “powerfully interstitial” complement to Ken Burns’ recent miniseries The American Revolution. “These films highlighting women’s lives are really illuminating, and they will catch people’s attention if they get the chance,” said Wulf. She describes the docuseries, as well as the Colonial Dames’ efforts to expand the Register of Ancestors, as “brave and bold.”

Documentaries as Tools of Public History

The nine short films in the For the Common Good docuseries were created by You’ll Never Forget Productions led by director Andrew Ferrett, writer Nathaniel Popkin, and producer Eva Roben. This trio were key members of the team that created Philadelphia: Great Experiment and other Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award winning films for History Making Productions. As in the earlier documentaries, these films feature carefully researched reenactments, vivid primary sources, and commentary by well-spoken experts. Ferrett and Popkin’s most recent project for History Making Productions, In Pursuit: Philadelphia and the Making of America, premiered last month and will be screened throughout the region in coming months.

A key aspect of the For the Common Good project will be curated conversations scheduled across the Commonwealth during 2026. The first of these discussions will take place on Wednesday, March 18 at the Museum of the American Revolution (MoAR) following a screening of three of the films. A panel including Wulf, Popkin, and Mickey Herr, executive producer and NSCDA/PA member, will be moderated by Adrienne Whaley, the museum’s director of education and community engagement. Whaley was an advisor to the Dinah project at Stenton and is one of the experts featured in the Dinah film.

According to Whaley, there is a strong alignment between the goals of For the Common Good and the MoAR’s mission to “uncover and share compelling stories about the diverse people and complex events that sparked America’s ongoing experiment in liberty, equality, and self-government.” As she explained, “People think about Founding Fathers, but not of a founding generation. Two and a half million people lived in British North America. It is ridiculous to say that only 56 of them matter.” Whaley commended the Dames for lifting up women’s stories and showing that women were active participants in the American Revolution. Fortunately, the MoAR is a private museum and thus immune to federal initiatives to erase complexity and diversity in American history.

Sowing the Seeds of Women’s History

In addition to her official job at MoAR, Whaley is an avid genealogist and a past president of the African American Genealogy Group. She is passionate about the role of dogged family researchers in revealing hidden histories that become a part of the broader historical narrative. At the beginning of the Dinah film, there is a voiceover from Whaley in which she says: “When we are able to find a story of a woman, and research it deeply, and pull out the documents that can be found, piece together every mention of them that you can find, you’re creating something that’s really rare and special, and you have an opportunity to think about, for this one flower that you’ve helped to grow, this one story of a woman’s life, maybe if you can help enough of those flowers to grow, you’re going to end up with something that is lush and full and beautiful and green and has the opportunity to grow even more.”

For the Common Good: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation is a strong start to growing this imagined garden of women’s history as we celebrate the United States Semiquincentennial. Herr was inspired by the reflections of a schoolgirl who came to Stenton as part of the History Hunters education program. When asked to express her hopes the future, the young visitor wrote in the thought bubble of a silhouette “That one day women will be treated and thought of the same way as men.” According to Herr, “Before For the Common Good was created, that little girl and her silhouette became my north star. I took a photo so I wouldn’t forget. It made me want to create a world where young girls and women could find themselves in our founding narrative. I am lucky to be a Pennsylvania Dame and part of an organization—this group of women—who want the same thing. We believe we are planting seeds for the future.”

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A screening of For the Common Good: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation will take place at the Museum of the American Revolution on Wednesday, March 18.
See details and reserve tickets here: https://www.amrevmuseum.org/events/amrev-presents-women-s-history-night

Learn more about future For the Common Good: A Year of Curated Conversations events here: https://www.nscdapa.org/common-good

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