How We Work

History Is For Everyone is a public-good research project dedicated to making America's Revolutionary War heritage accessible, trustworthy, and useful — especially for educators. We believe the stories of the founding era belong to everyone: not just well-funded museums or towns already on every tourist map, but every community that played a part in creating the country.

The project operates as an open research network. We publish our methodology, sources, and scoring rationale so readers can evaluate our claims for themselves. When we are uncertain, we say so. When evidence is thin, we label it. When we change a score or revise a narrative, the change is logged publicly.

A town enters our network when it meets two criteria: documented involvement in the Revolutionary period (roughly 1763–1783), and at least one surviving historical resource a visitor can experience today.

We intentionally include communities beyond the well-known battlefields — towns where committees of correspondence met, where militia organized, where enslaved people navigated the war's contradictions, where women ran farms and supply lines. Our goal is a network, not a greatest-hits list.

Towns connect through typed links, each representing a historically documented relationship. Links are weighted by significance and always include a brief explanation of the connection.

Current link types include: shared events (two towns involved in the same military action or political movement), shared people (historical figures active in both locations), shared themes (parallel experiences like “citizen soldiers” or “maritime resistance”), and shared routes (physical paths like the Boston Post Road or Paul Revere’s ride).

Town profiles are living documents. Scores change when new sources are added, when preservation conditions shift, or when our scoring methodology evolves. Every change is logged with a timestamp, a summary, and — where applicable — a public note explaining the reasoning.

We do not aim for consensus — we aim for transparency. If you disagree with a score or characterization, the sourcing is visible. Corrections, source suggestions, and factual challenges are welcome via the Partner page.

Every source cited in a town profile is assigned a credibility tier. This does not mean lower-tier sources are unreliable — it means we want readers to understand the evidentiary basis for what they're reading.