USA > Pennsylvania > Montgomery County > Historical sketches : a collection of papers prepared for the Historical Society of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, 1921-1925, Volume VII > Part 13
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On December 11th the army was ordered to march to Swedes' Ford, although it had been originally intended to pass at Matson's Ford, where a bridge had been hastily constructed; but a body of four thousand British under
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Cornwallis having appeared on the height above West Con- shohocken, this plan was changed. In fact, nearly one thous- and of the Americans had crossed, but after some exciting adventures, graphically reported by General Potter and Colonel Lacey, notably, they returned to the east side of the river, and marched up the three and one-half miles to the other Ford,1 the passage of which was effected on the 12th. The diary of Dr. Albigence Waldo gives us one of the most human accounts of the day's business, in this style: "We are ordered to march over the river. It snows-I'm sick-eat nothing-no whiskey-no baggage-Lord !- Lord !!- Lord !!!- till sunrise crossing the river-cold and uncomfortable."
On the 13th, the army marched into the Gulph, a place which this same Dr. Waldo says "seemed well adapted by its situation to keep us from pleasures and enjoyments of this world or being conversant with anybody in it." Other nice things about the place were, that there were so few families to steal from, and there were warm sides of the hills to erect huts upon. A gill of rum-the regulation orderly book prescription for official dissipation-had been ordered served to the men, and the appointment of Mr. Archibald Reed, as paymaster to eight Pennsylvania regi- ments, was announced. The signal service advised that the weather was likely to be fair, so on the strength of that prediction the tents were not taken along; instead the axes were issued, as there was plenty of good wood for the cut- ting, from which the men could fashion shelters-but either the weather-man failed, or Lieutenant McMichael's diary is wrong, for he wrote in it that they were "without tents or blankets in the midst of a severe snow storm."
With becoming propriety, the Pennsylvania Society of the Sons of the Revolution has perpetuated that week of the war by setting up a great boulder, furnished with bronze plates briefly inscribed with the fact of the encamp- ment. But one cannot discover the whole meaning of the camp from that monument, so I ask Dr. Waldo again to give
1 Swede's Ford, whence the army marched to the Gulph Hills .- Ed.
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us the real Gulph Mills: "What sweet felicities I have left at home-a charming wife-pretty children-good cook- ing-all agreeable-all harmonious." Then he fol- lows with his doleful vision of the soldier, "his worn-out shoes, his legs nearly naked from the remains of an only pair of stockings; . . . he cries with an air of wretchedness and despair, 'I'm sick, my feet lame, my legs all sore, my body covered with this tormenting itch. . . . I fail fast and all the reward I shall get is 'poor Will is dead.'"
The place is named, it seems, not for the reason that Dr. Waldo seems to insinuate, that it was something fixed between a man and his happiness, but for this great cleft in the hills through which the creek passes on its way to the Schuylkill. If it had been an autumn day in the Gulph Hills, when the wonderful beauty of the country, emphasized by the glorious color of the foliage, and the delicate tints of vanishing distances, is at its height, then one could better appreciate the sermon issued as general orders on Decem- ber 18th, when the army remained in its quarters because the day had been set apart by Congress as a day for public thanksgiving and prayer. There had been practically no shelter at all for four days, and the weather had been something awful-rain, snow and sleet, and biting cold; and it must have seemed bitterly ironical to have to listen to the proclamation issued by Congress from their "com- fortable room and by a good fireside."
An interesting survival of those dark days at the Gulph is the Henderson Supplee house, just across the road from the marker. At a little later period than the encampment, when the country was outposted for long distances between the two armies, with a view to heading off any hostile oper- ations, this house was the headquarters of Aaron Burr. Colonel Burr had command of the post here, and the story of how he checked the spread of a mutiny by striking off the arm of the ringleader with his sword, is one of the in- cidents that identify him with the locality. Lord Stirling was in command of the post there for a time, and his head- quarters were a little farther to the east, at a place still known as "Rebel Hill."
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Between the Gulph Mills and the Bird-in-Hand is a very curious outcrop, known locally as the Gulph Rock.1 It is one of the landmarks in that country. Seen from the west, the profile of a ram's shaggy head and neck is quite appar- ent. The rock figures prominently in sentimental journeys of the youth of the neighborhood, for that is the place where the toll is taken from fair lips on moonlight nights. Another story, which has the sanction of truth from the man who told it to me, is, that some mischievous boys one night cut a lot of saplings, and hammered them under the overhang. The news spread that the rock was slipping down, and from their hiding places in the shrubbery these same boys got what fun they could out of the farmers who were compelled to drive long distances to escape the land- slide that didn't come. The sequel of the story is that most of the boys of Gulph Mills could not sit down for a month.
On the 19th, at ten in the morning, the army was again on its way, the Gulph road forming the main highway of march. The picturesque old King-of-Prussia Inn, located at the junction of the Gulph and Swedes' Ford roads, was erected in 1769, and it must have been a place of familiar resort at that time. It is no wonder that it has been good "property" for the romancers who have made use of the Revolutionary period. Anne Robeson Brown has a charming description of it in her story of "Sir Mark," and George Morgan gets it into his narrative of the adventures of "John Littlejohn of J." It has an interest to Freemasons, too, as being the occasional meeting place of Lodge No. 8, an historic organization warranted by the Provincial Grand Lodge, June 24, 1766, and which carried on its roster the names of many a man who served with distinction at Valley Forge.
One does not get the real Valley Forge "atmosphere" in summer time. The beautiful stream which passes on its way to the Schuylkill, through the narrow gorge in the hills there, had other uses, too, besides being merely pictur-
1 Now known as "The Hanging Rock."-Ed.
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esque. Its fall furnished an abundance of power for the industries established along its banks many years before the militant Americans made it famous .. But none of the glory of midsummer, and "the flickering shallows where the shadows bide," the wealth of foliage about the lazy waters, concerned the historic pilgrimage of 1777.
Near the old dam on the creek is the site of an iron- working plant which gave the place its name, and which, in 1757, came into the possession of John Potts. The busi- ness of Mount Joy forge-or the Valley forge, as it soon came to be known locally-was a very flourishing one; a great many teams and men were employed in making and marketing its products. Ironmaster John Potts saw that a mill which would furnish feed for the horses and flour for their drivers would be a profitable adjunct to the older industry on the creek, and in 1758 this was built, and it lasted until 1843.
About the same time, he built the mansion, which, with the mill, came into possession of his son Isaac in 1768. One of the early historic references to the mill, by the way, appears in a letter from Richard Peters, Secretary of War, to Thomas Wharton, president of the Executive Council of Pennsylvania. He wrote on August 30, 1777 (Washington at that time was playing hide and seek with Lord Howe in Northern Delaware) about a large quantity of flour spoiling for want of baking; "it lies at Valley Forge." Isaac Potts later on made flour for so illustrious a housekeeper as Martha Washington, but he seems to have had too much modesty to advertise either the generous appreciation of Thomas Wharton, or the patronage of His Excellency's household.
Almost the first object to attract the attention of the visitor, upon disembarking from the railway train at Valley Forge, is this old pointed-stone house of miller Isaac Potts, the structure which all America cherishes today as the headquarters of Washington for the half year the army was encamped upon the hills to the south. The place is now restored to its ancient similitude as far as possible. Martha Washington arrived there somewhere near the 1st of Febru-
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ary, and her presence there seems to have contributed greatly toward lightening the dreariness for many an afflicted soldier. With the concern that distinguished an- other Martha centuries ago, she seems to delight in the improved household conveniences. "The General's apart- ment is very small," she wrote; "He has had a log cabin built to dine in, which has made our quarters much more tolerable than they were at first."
The log cabin has been rebuilt, and the whole house, with its sacred memories, given over to the perpetuation of the "times which tried men's souls." A subterranean pas- sage which is said to have led to the river's edge has been vaulted up for some distance. Internally the place has been restored as closely as can be to the flavor of the early days when history was in the making. The various rooms abound in interesting pictures, articles of furniture and other relics of the Colonial and Revolutionary periods-in such pro- fusion, it might be remarked, as to give a certain plausibility to the story that Washington turned down an agreeable invitation one morning, on the plea that he yet had a dozen houses to headquarter in, fifty tables to write on, as many beds to sleep in, and two hundred and fifty chairs to sit on, and the morning was already far spent.
But the visitor to this historic shrine, wandering through its rooms and halls, cannot but revert to the great Com- mander-in-Chief, and think of the problems he had to con- front there, problems that would have appalled ordinary men. Here he faced and confounded the malign conspiracy of Conway; the misery and wretchedness of his suffering soldiers came home to him here; and it was here that he displayed a superhuman strength and courage in keeping alive through the long winter the feeble spark of a thing called the American Revolution. Here, too, the jangle of jealousies and the tiresome courts-martial got on his nerves; but despite all the foolishness and imprudence displayed by another great American, Washington pardoned, remitted and respited; and yet the army lived through its disap- pointed petty revenges on so many of the poor fellows who, after all, were very human.
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WASHINGTON'S HEADQUARTERS AT VALLEY FORGE
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In his address at the dedication of the equestrian statue of Anthony Wayne, on June 20, 1908, Governor Penny- packer took occasion to develop the reasons for locating the encampment at Valley Forge, and, with no little pride, pointed out the influence of this particularly favorite son of Pennsylvania in shaping the campaign to this end. Wayne's intimate knowledge of the country, coupled with his familiarity with the problems that were then engaging the military authorities, certainly gave weight to an opinion which subsequent events justified to the fullest extent. His service up to this time had been of extraordinarily high merit. In a sense, one regrets the passing of the bards of old, with a character like Wayne to furnish the "copy" for them.
It seems eminently fitting, therefore, that this colossal figure of Wayne should so dominate the landscape at Valley Forge, for next to that of Washington, his greatness loomed in the drearier days. From the heights, in the center of the outer line of intrenchment, the figure looks to the east over the rolling ground below, in perpetual memorial of the man who made good. Anthony Wayne may be accounted for by some, perhaps, on the new theory of eugenics; his father had distinguished himself in civil and martial affairs; his grandfather had done valiant service at the battle of the Boyne. But ancestry is not altogether a satisfactory ex- planation of why Wayne lived the strenuous life ever better than his forebears or his neighbors.
A granite marker along the roadside, about half a mile west of Centreville, in Chester county, directs the wayfarer to the official home of Wayne while at Valley Forge. In those days the house alluded to was, as it is still, in the possession of the Walker family, and the fact that Wayne's wife was kin to the Walkers may account for his having taken his residence there. Wayne's troops were the First and Second Pennsylvania Line. They were encamped about a mile and a half nearer Valley Forge, and the story of their deplorable condition is most graphically told in the correspondence emanating from this ancient homestead. As late as May 4th, one of his letters to President Wharton
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said that his men were "too naked to Appear on Parade." Still, had there been a Stony Point to take, lack of clothes would not have stood in the way.
In a letter from here, written to Secretary of War Peters, Wayne says that while he is not over-fond of danger, yet he would most cheerfully agree to enter into action once every week, instead of visiting each hut in his encampment as is his custom, where the pitiable condition of things beggars all description. "For God's sake, give us-if you can't give us anything else-give us linen that we may be enabled to rescue the poor worthy fellows from the vermin which are now devouring them and which has emaciated and reduced numbers exactly to answer the description of Shakespeare's apothecary. Some hundreds we thought prudent to deposit some six foot under ground-who have died of a disorder produced by want of clothing."
Not far away from the Wayne headquarters is another farmhouse associated with Frederick William Augustus, Baron von Steuben, the drill-master, or Inspector General, who had arrived at Valley Forge early in 1778. It is inter- esting to note that within a few months the man who was not over-fond of danger, was being lauded to Heaven as a "Modern Leonidas"; those poor fellows whom he describes as "covered with rags and crawling with vermin" were eye to eye with the crack troops of the British army at Mon- mouth-and it was not good for the grenadiers. Steuben plunged at once into the work that had brought him to Valley Forge, and his report of the conditions there is cer- tainly classic. "I saw officers at a grand parade at Valley Forge mounting guard," he says, "in a sort of dressing gown made of an old blanket or a woolen bed cover. With regard to their military discipline I may safely say that no such thing existed."
Rising at three o'clock in the morning, he would be on the parade ground at sunrise, take a musket in his own hands and show the picked squad just how the thing was to be done. In a few weeks of that sort of personal effort he had the whole camp fired with his own enthusiasm, so that the men with whom he began were able to execute the most
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difficult movements with the greatest precision. His report says that the arms were in a horrible condition, caked with rust, half of them without bayonets, many from which a single shot could not be fired. Historians agree, I think, that the cautious opinion of this soldier, as given by the Com- mander-in-Chief to Congress, has proven perfectly safe: "He appears to be much of a gentleman a man of military knowledge and acquainted with the world."
Another famous man who makes a substantial contribu- tion to the story of the privations at Valley Forge was Gen- eral Nathanael Greene. As late as February 20, 1778, he writes that the soldiers "were seven days without meat, and several days without bread. We are still in danger of starving. Hundreds of horses have already starved to death." Greene was appointed Commissary General, March 2d, and immediately a change for the better was noted. His head- quarters are said to have been at the old Conrad house, about a mile east of the Gulph Mills. It was built in 1747. Historians today rank the exploits of this son of a Rhode Island Quaker among those of the greatest generals, and he absorbed his tactics, and digested them pretty thoroughly, too, from books, just before the outbreak of the war, which he felt sure to come, with the mother country. For his work at Valley Forge, Washington commended him to Congress in this fashion: "in a word he has given the most general satisfaction and his affairs carry much the face of method and system."
It must not be imagined for one moment that the ragged and barefoot army went to Valley Forge and found those neat little chinked and chimneyed log huts, such as are now artistically spotted over the park, waiting for them, with cheerful fires blazing upon the hearths. They were details that took weeks to work out, with axe and adze in snow and sleet. There were no roast beef sandwiches or hot coffee on this "hike" for the fathers of today's sons. The army arrived at Valley Forge on December 19, 1777, and so early as the 20th, the soldiers were under general orders to save such parts of each tree they cut down for firewood,
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as will do for building, reserving sixteen and eighteen feet of the trunk for logs to rear their huts with.
Three weeks later they were evidently still building these houses, for on January 9th, the orderly book directs the men who could be spared from hutting to erect hos- pitals-a replica of which is now one of the attractions of the park. The number of sick had grown to alarming pro- portions, three thousand and over being the estimate of some. These hospitals were to be fifteen feet wide and twenty-five feet long in the clear, and the story at least nine feet high. There were to be windows made on each side, and a chimney at one end. I believe no door was pro- vided in the orderly book specifications, although our friend Dr. Waldo, who has gotten into a better humor in the meantime, tells of the one door on wooden hinges, hung to let in the friend, or sickly throng. They were to be cov- ered with boards or shingles only, without dirt-this last condition, considering the contemporaneous bug-infested and slum-stained literature, a most curious and ironical re- flection upon the work of those early hospital founders.
The huts the men occupied were theoretically furnished with large quantities of straw, which the Quartermaster- General was directed to use his utmost exertion to procure from the neighboring farmers, who had been advised to get their grain threshed out pretty quickly, or the straw would be taken with the grain in it, which is likely what happened. An easy and expeditious manner of covering these huts was also an occasion of some concern, and a guessing contest with a proffered reward for the best solu- tion had been projected, Major General Sullivan, Greene or Sterling to act as judge in deciding how a roof could be put on without tin, sawed shingles or tar paper. We quote again from the sprightly Waldo, who says of one roof, "although it leaks when showers are o'er, it did not leak two hours before." Ordinary Valley Forge mud and chest- nut splints seems to have been the winner.
The very name of Valley Forge suggests dreariness of soul. its literature is sombre with wretchedness and misery, and it is needful for the one who would appreciate its les-
p. 154. For Sterling, read Stirling.
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sons, to tramp the roads there in winter-and particularly a very cold winter. The hungry and forlorn champions of a well-nigh hopeless cause, wasted by wounds, privations and disease, finished their distressing campaign for the year, and traced their weary way up over the old highways, to "occupy a cold, bleak hill, and sleep under frost and snow without clothes or blankets," at Valley Forge. "The unfor- tunate soldiers were in want of everything; they had neither coats, hats, shirts, nor shoes; their feet and legs froze till they became black, and it was often necessary to amputate them."
It is said that in summer more pilgrims visit this historic spot every week than Washington had in his whole army then, but the real Valley Forge is not seen in summer. Under the patronage of a great Commonwealth, Valley Forge Park of this day presents an aspect of finely-groomed landscape- gardening, with broad, smooth highways leading to fair and far vistas, and with stone markers dotting it for the information of the unhistoric wayfarer. Nearly five hundred acres are now included in the reservation, and it is to the lasting credit of the late Governor Pennypacker that the consummation of years of endeavor on the part of many patriotic citizens was reached in the perpetual dedication of this hallowed ground to the American people.
The one criticism that any one can breathe at Valley Forge today is, that it looks too good to be true. Fort Hunt- ington, like the other works, is beautifully sodded over and freshly mounded up; portable relics of the Revolutionary age are carefully guarded with wire covering; houses and cross-roads and fortifications are labeled and identified. John Waterman, a Rhode Islander who never went home from the war, is covered with a heavy wire screen-not so much with the idea, perhaps, of keeping John as a feature of Valley Forge, as of keeping vandals away. Everything today is in such marked contrast with the times when Wayne, for instance, asked for clothes for his men, who were clutching shreds of old blankets over their nakedness -and the reply came, it will be recalled, that the delay in furnishing it was "due to the want of buttons."
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But still it will be a long while before the natural beauty of the place is entirely caught up with by the landscape desecrator. The lovely stream in the valley below had at- tractions to utilitarian Isaac Potts; it turned his mill wheel, and fed and clothed his family; and when the military engineers came, they found in it a natural defense from any serious attack in that direction, west of the main en- campment, although from what we know now of Howe's masterly inactivities, such a contingency was exceedingly remote. At Valley Forge the flow of the creek is almost due north for the mile from General Knox's headquarters to the Schuylkill, and the stream must have carried a much greater volume of water than it does now. Mount Joy, the highest summit on the east bank, lifts its wooded crest four hundred and twenty-four feet above the sea.
The unique contemporaneous map of the encampment which Governor Pennypacker found-as he finds so many of his treasures, in places where no one else thinks to look for them-gives a very good idea of the contours and the location of many of the brigades. Farther from the Schuyl- kill is the summit of Mount Joy, four hundred and twenty- four feet; a little farther north is another summit of three hundred and fifty feet, and still farther north and east, a third hill with its crest about three hundred feet high. The eastern descent of these hills breaks into an undulating landscape upon which most of the brigades were en- camped-that one exception being, I believe, the Caro- lina troops, who occupied the knoll across the creek in front of general headquarters and whose resurrection from the obscurity of many years may be laid to the enter- prise and discriminating taste of our friend, Governor Pennypacker.
The three hills just mentioned still bear the records left by the citizens of that long departed community. Mount Joy and her two sisters are still the proud wearers of their grass- grown chaplets - very scientifically banged and correctly cut today-in the shape of lines of earthworks sixteen hun- dred feet, three hundred feet, and thirteen hundred feet long, placed there on the crests by the toilers, in the youth
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of our nation. Below these works, too, are still preserved Fort Huntington, protecting the northern end of the lines, and dominating the river road and the country of the Schuylkill valley; and Fort Washington, at the south end of the lines on Mount Joy, commanding the approaches from the south and west.
Another feature of sufficient importance as to get on the old map, is the Star Redoubt, now almost an indistinguish- able hump on the landscape-but still visible, if you know where to go looking for Star Redoubt, with guide posts alongside. This was built to command the approach to Sulli- van's bridge, a temporary structure thrown across the river about a quarter of a mile northeast of the fort. Stedman would have us believe that Washington didn't have much confidence in the Star Redoubt, for he says that when the returns from Barren Hill commenced coming in, "he thought the case so hopeless that he broke his bridge across the Schuylkill lest the success should be pursued against him." It would seem that while Stedman was dreaming, he should have had the bridge-breakers at work, building another Star Redoubt that afternoon.
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