Monument Returns Home
Imagine, if you will, back to 1892 – Grover Cleveland was elected U.S. President, Ellis Island first opened as an immigration station, the Sierra Club was founded by John Muir, and our fledgling Society, just a few years old, placed one of our very first historic monuments to forever recognize and memorialize the Continental Army’s Gulph Mills Encampment in December of 1777. Why is this encampment of such importance, you may ask? The Society was lucky enough to welcome Sheilah D. Vance, Esq., a renowned scholar and award-winning author, to join us on November 3rd, at Society Headquarters at Historic Waynesborough, to share with us the riveting history she explores in her award-winning new book titled “Threshold to Valley Forge: The Six Days of The Gulph Mills Encampment”. Vance grew up on Rebel Hill, the modern name for the site of the Gulph Mills Encampment, and as an inquisitive middle schooler she wrote her first “history” about the Encampment for a school project. That fascination and passion have now grown over the years to yield several more papers, journals, articles and historical novels further exploring the critical importance of this moment in our history.
But back to 1892, before there had really been any significant scholarship about The Gulph Mills Encampment, our Society membership knew about the lore and importance of this encampment. The Supplee Farm up on the hill overlooking Gulph Mills, where the Army encamped in 1777, was still in the Supplee Family, and Henderson Supplee played a pivotal role in ensuring the historic monument was placed.
This is what he knew: George Washington and his Continental Army had evacuated Philadelphia (as captured in this famous painting by William Trego titled “The March to Valley Forge”) and were heading north and west to avoid the British army in and around Philadelphia, but also to explore their options for a winter encampment. In early December, as they crossed the Schuylkill River at both Swedes’ Ford and Matson’s Ford, amid skirmishes with the British, they were in dire need of a safe, defensible haven, at least for a few days, to regroup and to make some crucial decision about where to set up camp for the winter. The hills of Gulph Mills gave them the perfect sanctuary to camp from December 12-19, before deciding on, and marching into, Valley Forge.
The timing of Sheila Vance’s lecture to our membership was no coincidence, as it came just four days before our long-awaited relocation of the PSSR’s original 1892 Gulph Mills Monument back to its rightful historic location. It had been moved a couple of time since its original 1892 location (once in 1949 for the Schuylkill Expressway construction, and again in 1986 for a PennDOT road-widening project), but its most recent location was not at the site of the original encampment – it was over a mile away.
So finally, on a brisk and breezy Friday November 7th, after almost 4 years of dedicated work, the Sons monument to the Gulph Mills encampment, all 35,000 lbs. of it, was finally returned to its rightful historic home. The area known as Rebel Hill is now a residential community, and much of the area around Rebel Hill has been developed over the last 100-plus years. Part of the challenge was to find an historically accurate new location for the monument. The new site – at what was the southern end of the original encampment – is a long strip of property, right next to the Welcome to Upper Merion Township sign, that lends itself perfectly to being the new home of our “old” Monument. In early discussion with the Upper Merion Township, we found that this piece of property was owned by the Sunoco Corporation (there is a Sunoco station at the north end of this property). Sunoco jumped at the opportunity to allow us to utilize this piece of land, and now that the move of the monument is complete, we look forward to the official rededication ceremony and ribbon-cutting on the 16th of December. We cannot express enough our enormous gratitude to the champions of this worthy project, Society members Michael C. Dougherty and Harvard C. Wood, IV. Their patience and persistence, and skills with a shovel, will forever be recognized as integral to the history of this monument, and our commemoration of the importance of this encampment.
Please click HERE if you would like to attend the rededication ceremony.
