CHAPTER ELEVEN:
New Interpretations at Valley Forge
The biggest change at Valley Forge within the last
twenty-five years has not been the administrative transfer of Valley
Forge State Park to the National Park Service, but rather the change in
how Valley Forge was being interpreted by all those associated with it.
Despite some events that were merely glitzy crowd-pleasers, the general
trend has been toward the use of new techniques and sources to uncover
new information that tends to enrich the traditional Valley Forge story
and broaden its appeal.
It was evident that things were changing in 1971,
when a reader queried the question-and-answer column of the Valley Forge
Historical Society's journal: "Were all the troops at Valley Forge of
the Caucasian race?" No, the editor replied, African Americans had
served in several regiments, and so had some native Americans. [1] By the end of the 1970s, the contribution
of other ethnic groups was being actively chronicled.
In the same decade, it was also acknowledged that
significant numbers of women had spent the winter of 1777-1778 at Valley
Forge. In years gone by, visitors might have gotten the impression that
the only women in the camp were the wives of important men, such as
Martha Washington, to whom many secondary sources had assigned roles
really more typical of upper-middle-class women in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. In his 1905 drama, Dr. Burk created a
scene at Washington's Headquarters in which Martha organizes other
ladies in sewing and knitting for the troops. She advises a local woman,
"Give your daughters such honest accomplishments as will make them
capable housekeepers." [2] A 1950
newspaper article portrayed Martha and the wives of other officers as
genteel, Victorian angels of mercy, describing how they patched
uniforms, knit scarves, darned stockings, and prepared baskets of food
and medicine for the soldiers. [3]
Pinkowsky's collection of Valley Forge traditions reinforced this homey
image. [4] In 1976, the historical
society's journal again broke ground with some new interpretive material
on female "camp followers" ordinary wives and paramours who
accompanied soldiers, hauling along the necessary pots, pans, and
bedding. Camp followers, it explained, washed and cooked, nursed the
sick, spied on the enemy, sometimes stole essential food and supplies,
and occasionally followed their men into battle. [5]
As the bicentennial drew closer, major changes were
made to the park's key historic houses to ensure that they were proper
settings for interpretation and reflected the most current knowledge of
the past. The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission drove these
projects; park commission minutes suggest that the commissioners were
not really involved in the details and were primarily concerned that
work be done in time for the bicentennial summer of 1976. The changes
were based on research by the National Heritage Corporation, but the
sketchy report produced, plus the lack of a completion report, makes it
difficult to determine today exactly why certain changes were made.
At Varnum's Quarters, several window openings were
changed, floors were replaced, and a stairway was completely
reconstructed, some of this work reversing changes that had been made in
the 1930s. The project made Varnum's Quarters look the way scholars then
believed that an eighteenth-century house in the area might have looked,
but over the years so much work had been done on this structure that
there was no way to tell whether Varnum's Quarters looked like this
particular house had looked in the eighteenth century. When this project
was later evaluated for the National Park Service, the authors of its
historical structure report, John Bruce and Cherry Dodd, wrote: "The
result is that, although Varnum's today may exhibit all the
characteristics of a small house of the early eighteenth century,
virtually all clues indicative of its own unique design have vanished."
[6] Tom McGimsey, formerly the historic
architect at the park, seconds this opinion, adding that in his mind
Varnum's Quarters had been made somehow "sterile" in that it now lacks
the quirky details that would make it seem like real people built the
place and lived there. [7]
After the National Park Service approved a grant,
changes were also made at Washington's Headquarters. Here too work done
in the 1930s was reversed: the kitchen wing roof was once again lowered,
and the dogtrot between the kitchen and the main building was rebuilt.
Hardware was replaced with pieces that were more in keeping with the
period, and the entrance to the root cellar was closedan
unfortunate move in that it kept visitors from understanding the origin
of the secret-tunnel legend. [8] The
Dodds proclaimed this latest restoration of Washington's Headquarters
"the most sophisticated to date" [9] and
deemed the updated kitchen wing "historically justifiable." [10] Tom McGimsey agreeshis only
significant complaint being that the grade around the building was made
too low. [11]
In conjunction with the architectural changes, a
sophisticated new furnishing plan encouraging the interpretation of the
activities of the occupants of Washington's Headquarters during the
winter encampment was developed. It stipulated that furniture be
arranged to make the building seem cramped and crowded. Country-style
and high-style furniture from various periods would be scattered about
to suggest that Washington's belongings were interspersed with those of
the house's previous occupant. Visitors were to get the impression that
they had arrived at the Headquarters at the busiest time of the
daywhile Washington was receiving his generals, and his
secretaries were hurriedly copying his correspondence. Little details
would add to the overall impression, such as a nail in the wall near a
shadow line, suggesting that a picture had been taken down when
Washington moved in. [12] The plan was
used for only a short time, but once the National Park Service was
manning Washington's Headquarters they also stressed the various
activities and hectic pace of a military command center in their
interpretation of this building to visitors. [13]
Some thought was also given to the accuracy of the
landscaping around the park's historic houses. After the
nineteenth-century dam had been removed from Valley Creek in 1920, none
of those responsible for the park had shown any concern that the park
itself did not really evoke the winter encampment. Boy scouts had been
allowed to plant rose gardens, and various groups and individuals had
introduced nonnative memorial trees. When one visitor raised the issue
in 1963, park commissioners replied: "Beauty has not ruined Valley
Forge. It has given a background against which the story can be told."
[14] In 1975, inconclusive research among
primary-source materials was done in an attempt to understand how
Washington's Headquarters would have been landscaped in the eighteenth
century. No immediate changes were executed, however, and when the Dodds
evaluated the area in their study of Washington's Headquarters published
in 1981, they remarked that the landscaping then "resemble[d] a city
park with walks designed for young women with baby carriages and Sunday
strollers rather than the rural setting that would have been produced by
the orchard, barnyard and gardens of two houses in a small forge
community." [15]
In the 1970s, Valley Forge was following the lead of
many other institutions by adopting the "Williamsburg Formula," which
utilized costumed guides stationed in historic structures to act as
interpreters and to demonstrate arts and crafts and other activities. In
the summer of 1970, a high school teacher dressed as a Continental
soldier stationed himself outside the park's auditorium, where he
interpreted the role of a soldier in the Continental line. [16] Many women volunteers costumed as
colonial ladies later participated in a program called "Host 76."
Between 1974 and 1976, they worked at the park's information desk and in
the park's historic houses. Annamaria Malloy supported the project, but
the volunteers themselves sometimes felt that the paid park staff
resented their efforts. One remarked on the number of visitors who had
commented that the volunteers "were distinguishable from the Staff by
their degree of enthusiasm and courtesy to visitors." [17]
Despite the new interpretations being made at Valley
Forge, the celebration of the bicentennial reflected not scholarship but
a desire for spectacle and pageantry. The dissension and demonstrations
of the late 1960s and early 1970s had upset many traditionalist
Americans, who reacted with nostalgia and expressions of national pride.
The summer of 1976 was a kind of holiday at Valley Forge.
The earliest bicentennial plans called for something
big, impressive, and costly. In 1971 a suburban coalition suggested that
Valley Forge become the focal point for bicentennial celebrations in the
entire Delaware Valley. They envisioned the development of a regional
recreation center and a performing arts center. A monorail would be
built in the park, and a grand pageant would be staged there on July 4.
[18] Charles Mather, then chairman of the
park commission, publicly replied, "The commission will be open to any
and all suggestions for its Bicentennial celebration, but it will insist
on an orderly, dignified program in keeping with the hallowed grounds of
the park." [19]
More expensive suggestions foundered, and Valley
Forge ended up with a modest pageant. Pageants were not new to historic
sites, and as early as 1949, park administrators had considered some
sort of annual Valley Forge play that would combine history and
entertainment. [20] This never
materialized, although the Boy Scouts had been permitted to stage
pageants during their jamborees. Valley Forge finally got its own
official pageant in May 1976, when "The Ballad of Valley Forge" was
performed in a temporary amphitheater near the Wayne statue by the
Pottstown Symphony Orchestra and a chorus of local residents and high
school students. Astronaut Neil Armstrong dramatically read the
narrative portions of this combination of music and history based on the
letters of George Washington. [21]
A second bicentennial event reenacted a foraging
expedition originally conducted by Anthony Wayne. During the winter
encampment, Wayne had gone to New Jersey by way of Wilmington to procure
provisions for the army. He had driven cattle back to Valley Forge
through New Jersey's Mercer County and Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester
counties in Pennsylvania. The Salem County Historical Society of New
Jersey organized a project in which modern cows retraced the footsteps
of their eighteenth-century ancestors, Cattle for the reenactment was
provided by Cowtown, New Jersey, a place known for its rodeos. The cows
arrived at Valley Forge in June 1976, and the event was locally known as
"the Great Cow Chase." [22]
The cows were soundly upstaged by Valley Forge's real
bicentennial spectacle, still fondly remembered by some as the Wagon
Train Pilgrimage, a nationwide bicentennial event lasting more than a
year in which authentically reproduced covered wagons were driven east
instead of west over old wagon trails. Each of the fifty states was
provided with a wagon, which could be sent on a state tour until it
joined one of the other wagon trains coming through. Each major wagon
train had a traveling musical show that was performed for local
communities at every place the wagon train stopped. Citizens and
schoolchildren could sign scrolls rededicating themselves to the
principles on which the nation was founded, and these were collected by
the wagoneers. The project was also inclusive in that anyone who had a
Wagon and horses could ride along. Some people took their children out
of school for a year to ride with the covered wagons. The project had
many corporate sponsors, including Aero-Mayflower Transit Company, Gulf
Oil, and Holiday Inns. A division of a prominent Philadelphia
advertising firm handled details and public relations. [23]
Annamaria Malloy suggested to the park commissioners
that Valley Forge be considered as the eastern termination point for the
Wagon Train Pilgrimage, and in 1975 she introduced the wagon train's
national coordinator, C. Robert Gruver, to the commissioners, who
unanimously approved the plans. [24] The
wagon train was scheduled to arrive on July 4, 1976, and remain at
Valley Forge for two months, during which participants would host
activities for park visitors.
The general public did not seem to question whether
this activity was compatible with the cause of historic preservation at
Valley Forge, or even appropriate for this site. Unlike the Great Cow
Chase, the Wagon Train Pilgrimage did not reenact a historic event
connected with the winter encampment. It was, however, a highly
entertaining and involving project and a chance for people to reaffirm
their loyalty to America. The nationwide program was warmly received,
and local criticism was limited to problems with food delivery in Valley
Forge and the unauthorized activities of some rogue wagoneers. [25] An editorial in the historical society's
journal mentioned damaged grass and remaining litter, but also noted
that the participants had left "the feeling that some people in America
besides the members of the [Valley Forge Historical] Society remember
that Valley Forge is important, and that this Park marks a very decisive
time in the nation's history. If the wagons can accomplish that, they're
welcome here . . . anytime." [26]
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