Understanding our past can re-shape the way we see both our present and future.

So for July 4th 2017, we used Ancestry’s capabilities to find the descendants of the Declaration of Independence’s signers. Though a group of 56 white men, their descendants were of strikingly diverse ethnicities, including African American, Hispanic, Native American and Asian.

We then brought them together to recreate John Trumbull’s painting, Declaration of Independence.

Launched in the wake of Trump’s election and subsequent rise of white nationalism, the work was meant to show that diversity is an inextricable part of who we are as Americans.