In my house, two legacies face each other.

On one wall hangs a reproduction of “The Spirit of ’76,” painted by my cousin Archibald M. Willard for the nation’s 100th birthday. The central drummer in that painting — the older man leading the trio — was modeled after Archibald’s father, my cousin too.

“The Spirit of ’76” is America’s most famous Revolutionary painting — the definitive image of independence, instantly recognizable wherever it appears. First displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, it captured the mood of a nation celebrating its hundredth year and looking back on its birth in revolution.

For my family, it is not just symbolic. My father descends from six officers in the Massachusetts Line of the Continental Army — and from a seventh, a 13-year-old fifer who f

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