Friday, August 6, 2010

Day 39 Valley Forge & Independence, PA


My family's homestead is about 10 miles from Valley Forge and the 1st Rapp immigrant supplied Washington's troops with food & forage and his son Barnett was with the PA Militia. Another Grandfather from a diffferent branch of the family died there, about 3 miles from his home.
The NPS has recreated the log huts the soldiers lived in based on written descriptions by the soldiers and archaeological excavations.

The huts were supposed to house 12 enlisted men.

The officers had it a little better.
The National Memorial Arch

The Park doesn't have many statues or monuments. This is Gen. "Mad" Anthony Wayne
On the driving tour, this deer was right along the road next to
the monument to the unknown soldier.
Gen. Washington occupied the Potts house as his headquarters during the winter of 1777-78.
The Park service has decorated the rooms with period furnishings
and artifacts that are typical of what the staff officers would have used.
Washington didn't sleep here. He had a campaign tent that he slept in throughout the winter. Martha did sleep in the house when she came to visit, so maybe George did sleep in the house once or twice.
I hadn't been to Center City Philadelphia in many years and alot had changed at Independence Mall
including the new Visitor Center and a new building/exhibit for the Liberty Bell.
Due to tourists demand and available space, the Park Service gives out a limited number of tickets each day for a tour of Independence Hall.
We got there too late for tickets so we didn't get inside.

They also had a new security system with guards keeping a perimeter, so this was as close as we could get without tickets.
The Liberty Bell is in a pavilion
with a lot of displays on its history
and its iconic staus.
2 blocks from Independence Hall is Carpenter's Hall

which was the site of the 1st Continental Congress.
There are a number of "necessaries" on the Mall. I should investigate when they started putting the cut out of the crescent moon on the door.

We stopped in the 2nd National Bank Building ( the one Andrew Jackson closed ) which has a Portrait gallery of famous people of the Revolution.

I took lots of pictures of the revolutionary leaders to use in class.
Thomas Jefferson

John Paul Jones

The next time we go back to PA, we plan on spending a full day to get inside Independence Hall and see the other Colonial sites like Elfreth's Alley, the oldest inhabited street in America.














































































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