You’ve all heard the story

Monday, October 10, 2022, Valley Forge PA and General George Washington.

In Mary’s never ending quest to fill up her passport book, we toured Valley Forge today. All I can say is life was hard back then.

It’s a large area with several things to see, along with, more than I could count, monuments and dedications. We spent a few hours there, besides driving, they have a walking/bike path to all the exhibits, one could spend a couple of days, if you walked and stopped to read the plaques.

10,000 men living 12 to a very small cabin = over 830 cabins just to house the men. The valley was about a mile long. Each brigade had its own set of cabins scattered through out the valley. 12 men to a small cabin, they all better be easy going, and get along good.

I’m sure the landscape, just like in the Minute Men story, that I forgot to mention, the areas only had a few trees because they were established farming communities.

10,000 enlisted men on one side of the river, then on the other side of the Schuykill River were the, lack of a better word, camp followers, wives & children, laundress’s, blacksmiths, carpenters, and so on. Probably as close in number to the enlisted men.

More below.

General George Washington lived in this house with Martha and it wasn’t just the 2 of them, no, a total of 25 people lived and worked in the house. Cooks, aids, maids, and others, white, black, free and enslaved.

First it was a small house which had 3 small bedrooms up stairs and even smaller attic area and 2 rooms down, along with a detached kitchen. At night people were sleeping everywhere including the hallway leading to the stairs. When we were there the kitchen area had the furniture removed last week due to a flooding concern.

Yup there’s more.

The cannon, whether reproduced is all steel to keep them from rotting or not, I don’t know, but the entire cannon, frames wheels, and all were steel.

The canons were kept in a central location, so they could be moved to which ever direction an attack came from. I read that it was a good thing that an attack never came, because the streets were a quagmire of mud and ruts, and the horses and men were so starved that they probably couldn’t have moved the cannons.

More below

The rest of the pictures, the ones of the church are from G.W’s. time.

Finally, the words you’ve been looking for – The End