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Journalist, historian, and award-winning author Sheilah Vance, who grew up on Rebel Hill in Gulph Mills, delivered a well-received lecture to the Society on Nov. 3 about her book “Threshold to Valley Forge: The Six Days of the Gulph Mills Encampment.”

The Philadelphia area is rife with sites that mark where Revolutionary War events occurred, particularly in 1777 when the British invaded Philadelphia and fought battles with Gen. George Washington’s Continental forces at Brandywine, Germantown and elsewhere.

The encampment of Washington’s 10,000 to 11,000 troops at Gulph Mills on their way to Valley Forge in December 1777 is one of the overlooked events in that story, Vance told the Society and its guests, who assembled at Historic Waynesborough.

Her remarks came the very week that the Society was relocating the seven-foot, 20,000-pound rock monument it created in 1892 to commemorate the encampment. Since 1986, the monument had been sitting in a park a mile from its original spot. In cooperation with Upper Merion Township and the Sunoco company, the Society trucked the monument back to its historically accurate location just south of the Sunoco property on Old Gulph Road. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Vance called attention to the sacrifices made by Washington’s soldiers and challenged audience members to think what they would do to preserve democracy.

Society President Michael Whelan thanked Vance for her remarks and presented her with a copy of the Society’s book, “Standards and Colors of the American Revolution.” A reception was held afterward.