Last updated: June 8, 2026
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My Valley Forge Story: Andrew D. Stevenson
Names in the Muster Roll: A Rhode Island–Pennsylvania Story at Valley Forge
Valley Forge has always felt less like a symbol and more like part of my family’s own landscape. I grew up in Central Pennsylvania, studied nearby at Haverford College, and now volunteer with the Valley Forge Park Alliance. But long before any of that, a young relative of mine endured the winter of 1777–1778 here as part of the Rhode Island regiments—units that would soon become some of the most racially integrated formations in early American military history.
My 5th great-granduncle, Private James Capwell (1756–1848) of Coventry, Rhode Island, enlisted on May 18, 1777 at Warwick. He first served in Captain Ebenezer Flagg’s Company, 1st Rhode Island Regiment. Before December 1, 1777, he transferred into Captain Elijah Lewis’s Company—the company under which he entered the Valley Forge encampment. In May 1778, during the Rhode Island line’s wartime reorganization, he transferred into Captain Coggeshall Olney’s Company, 2nd Rhode Island Regiment, with which he later fought in the Battle of Rhode Island and served in operations across New Jersey. He was discharged with the regiment on March 1, 1780 at Morristown, New Jersey.
What makes the Rhode Island line at Valley Forge significant is the integrated character it was developing during this same winter. In February 1778, after sustained urging from General James Mitchell Varnum, the Rhode Island General Assembly authorized the enlistment of enslaved Black men who would earn freedom through military service. At Valley Forge, the African American and Indigenous soldiers already serving in the 1st Rhode Island—together with the newly enlisted men—were organized into a single company under Captain Thomas Arnold. That company encamped at Valley Forge from February to June 1778 before marching out with the brigade to fight at Monmouth. These soldiers formed the nucleus of what would later be known as the “Black Regiment.”
One of those soldiers of color was Thomas Reynolds, a free Black Continental from the Bristol/Barrington area who enlisted in 1777 and was wounded at Fort Mercer. His name appears in records linked to the same Rhode Island regimental framework in which Capwell served. Capwell and Reynolds occupied different positions within a deeply unequal society, yet they were part of the same Rhode Island line enduring the same Valley Forge winter. Their names appear in the same pools of muster rolls, and their regimental paths—white and Black, free and formerly enslaved—reflect the complicated but meaningful integration that emerged out of necessity in 1777–78.”
The wider Capwell and Reynolds families contributed across Rhode Island’s wartime structure. James’s brother Stephen Capwell III, my direct ancestor, served in the Kent County Militia, responsible for inland defense while Newport remained under British occupation. Their cousin Captain Robert Reynolds commanded a local militia company, and his son Captain George Reynolds enlisted in 1778, likely fought in the Battle of Rhode Island, and later took part in Sullivan’s 1779 expedition. After the war, members of the Reynolds and Capwell families migrated to what is now Factoryville, Pennsylvania, eventually joining by marriage; two surnames that appeared separately on Rhode Island muster rolls later appeared together on Pennsylvania headstones.
Another branch of my family connects to the Valley Forge story through Pennsylvania itself. My 6th great-grandfather Peter Kuhn, a German immigrant, served in Captain Adam Foulk’s company of a Pennsylvania militia battalion charged with guarding roads, fords, and inland routes during the British occupation of Philadelphia. His militia service was part of the wider logistical network that helped sustain Washington’s army here. He carried to America a 1534 Luther Bible, still in my family, containing some of the earliest written traces of our presence in Pennsylvania.
NPS/ Andrew D. Stevenson
- a teenage Continental in Captain Lewis’s Company during the winter encampment,
- Black and Native soldiers reorganized into Captain Arnold’s integrated company,
- a Pennsylvania militiaman patrolling the interior routes that fed the encampment, and
- postwar migration that brought my ancestors into the region where I grew up.
Today, when I walk the park as a volunteer, I know that its history rests not in myth but in the documented endurance of ordinary people—white, Black, Indigenous, immigrant—whose names appear in muster rolls rather than in textbooks, but whose service held the Continental Army together at its lowest point. Among them was Private James Capwell, who marched into Valley Forge in Captain Elijah Lewis’s company and emerged into one of the most consequential periods of the war.
Valley Forge matters to me because it links my Pennsylvania upbringing, my Rhode Island and German-American ancestry, and my own public service. It is where my family’s Revolutionary story took shape, and where the early, imperfect beginnings of a more inclusive American service first appeared. I am proud to stand in that line of memory.
“It is imagined that a Battalion of Negroes can be easily raised there … should that measure be adopted … the Service will be advanced.”
— Brig. Gen. James Mitchell Varnum, Valley Forge, 2 January 1778