The untold story behind America's most important military victory

Rochambeau the Farm Cat - "Beau" for short - has big boots to fill. He's named for Comte de Rochambeau, the French general who helped win the Battle of Yorktown in 1781. This was the moment America secured its independence from Britain - five years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago.

Beau has a venerable demeanour, as though he might have been around when events unfolded. Back then British general Charles Cornwallis' troops were besieged while regrouping in Yorktown on the Virginia Peninsula: on one side was a regiment led by Rochambeau and George Washington; on the other a French fleet moored in Yorktown's harbour. The soldiers captured British redoubts and pounded their defences. Finally, Cornwallis surrendered. The Treaty of Paris was signed two years later, granting the fledgling nation its freedom.

Today, pleasure boats are berthed along the riverfront and ferries chug upriver from Chesapeake Bay. Rochambeau's long-haired namesake spends his dotage sunning himself at a revolution-era farm re-created at the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown. A woman clothed in a bonnet and long skirt tends a veggie garden; a breeches-clad man fixes cured bacon and hominy cakes on the log cabin's hearth. "We loosely based our farm on a real family that lived in the area," says museum interpreter Dan Cochran.

Among the farm's inventory were books, timber, fowls - and human chattel. The first enslaved Africans came ashore at James Island, on the peninsula's opposite shore, in 1619. "Half of York County was enslaved," Cochran says. "[This farm-owner's] brother had eight enslaved people, and he emancipated seven. The only one he kept was an 81-year-old man, because Virginia law said 'he can't go get a job, you've got to provide for him'."

Black soldiers fought on both sides during Yorktown's battle; this story, along with indigenous history, has gone largely untold. The Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission (VA250) aims to change that.

"We like to say that you can't truly look forward until you know your past," says Mike Frontiero of VA250. "[Those] are the stories that we want to be including in this commemoration, so everybody can feel their story is represented. And that includes the uncomfortable history."

The discomforts of the past have been ironed out at Cole Digges House, built for the tobacco merchant around 1726. Immaculately restored, it now houses Mobjack Bay Coffee Roasters and Petite Cafe. The scent of baked goods and roasting coffee erases the tobacco smoke of old; but preservation rules presented challenges for Celeste and Jo Gucanac, owners of Mobjack Bay Coffee Company - importantly, how to vent their vintage-style roaster. "We targeted the one spot in the roof that's not original to 1726," says Celeste. "Here in America, we have this whole thing where we dumped the tea because we were being taxed, so we're giving you coffee, which was the drink of patriots."

Though Boston is best known for throwing tea overboard in protest, the York River hosted its own "tea party". Tea drinkers are nonetheless welcome here; they gather around gingham-clothed tables or sit outdoors beneath the frothing crepe myrtle. The genteel atmosphere harks to the century leading up to the revolution, when Yorktown was a thriving port.

"They were kind of like the New York of the southern colonies," Celeste says. "Yorktown was the economic centre for getting anything in or sending it out."

Among the cargo was rum destined for the now-reconstructed Swan Tavern, a den of "unbounded licentiousness" in revolution-era days. Celeste's son Gabriel weaves a path between such relics while leading me on a Yorktown and Co Stanley Steamer tour: Customs House, commandeered by Virginia militia during the war; Nelson House, pockmarked with cannon shot and etched with the initials of injured soldiers housed here during the Civil War; the Yorktown Victory Monument, crowned with Lady Liberty.

The writer was a guest of the Virginia Tourism Corporation