Along with many others in July, we hopped onto Disney+ for a month to take a look at the film version of the Broadway smash Hamilton. It was phenomenal.

Memories flooded back as I thought back to my early teens, Girl Scouts, and a community service project at the Burr Mansion.

We moved to Fairfield, Connecticut, during the summer of 1970. In the fall, I joined the local Cadette Girl Scout troop and started working on badges.

For the “My Community” badge (top right – I think – in the above photo), we needed to find a way to improve our town. You know, like pick up trash along a highway or plant flowers in front of town hall.

Nothing really appealed to us (bad attitude, I know) until we heard about the Burr Mansion. The town had acquired this historic homestead a decade earlier and needed help restoring the grounds.

And so, one Saturday morning, we Cadettes headed over to the Burr property, gardening gloves in hand, ready to dig in the dirt.

We were 13 or 14 years old then, and the internet was still decades away … so I hope you’ll forgive us for assuming we were pulling weeds on the site of the famous duel with Alexander Hamilton.

For the record, the duel in which Aaron Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton, occurred in New Jersey in 1804.

As we pulled weeds and thinned out the tall grasses, we found something.

“What’s this? Come here!”

Oh, boy, was that an exciting moment! Little by little, we uncovered what appeared to be a long-lost fountain. Or maybe it was a fish pond. But it was definitely a round indentation in the earth, encircled by a small rock wall.

Aaron’s uncle Thaddeus Burr built the mansion back in 1732 on what is now called the Old Post Road. Thaddeus’ friend John Hancock married Dorothy Quincy there in 1775. Other visiting forefathers included George Washington, John Adams, Samuel Adams, and, of course, Aaron Burr. But not Alexander Hamilton.

Burned to the ground during the Revolutionary War, the mansion was rebuilt in 1790. This time around it was an exact replica of John Hancock’s home in Boston; he offered to provide all the windows for the mansion if his friend used his design.

The Town of Fairfield continues to own the property and rents it out for weddings. In an online description of the venue, it mentions four acres of beautiful gardens including a “reflecting pond and fountain.” Could it be?

Just to be a bit controversial here at the end …

… I’ve got to admit that when push comes to shove, the musical 1776 is more my cup of tea (if you’ll pardon the phrase) than the Broadway hit named for Alexander Hamilton. Gary and I watch the movie version of 1776 nearly every year on July 4. James watched it with us for the first time this year, and agrees.

My favorite song is near the end. John Adams (played by the inimitable William Daniels, may he live forever!) is at his wit’s end, as the southern colonies’ leadership won’t sign the Declaration of Independence unless they remove the passage abolishing slavery. General Washington’s latest dispatch to Congress had implored, “Is anybody there?”

Despite the ever-deepening turmoil our nation is in, I still firmly believe we will find ourselves again. It may take some more digging in the dirt to rediscover who we are and who we should be, but we will.

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