Gulph Mills Monument
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With organizational matters completed, Pennsylvania embarked quickly and vigorously on activities which have fixed the main outline of our program to the present day.
Foremost among these was the holding of special religious services. In 1890 the Board of Managers appointed a standing committee on the subject. At first, the services were held on the Sunday nearest the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington, April 19, 1775; but by 1891 the anniversary of the commencement of the Valley Forge encampment, December 19, 1777, was substituted. The custom seems never to have been suspended, even in wartime. In recent years, largely because of the often inclement weather of December, the service was moved to the month of May. In our early days attendance at the memorial service was a "must." Then held at either Christ Church or St. Peter's as structures which had stood during the Revolution, at least 150 members were customarily led into the church by the Color Guard. Its hearty support of the occasion has remained unwavering in assembling at many different churches through the years for the occasion.
Landmarks and memorials likewise
trace back to very early beginnings. In 1890 our first two markers were
placed. In December, 1893, the huge natural bolder at Gulph Mills was
set up to mark an encampment by the Continental Army on its way to Valley
Forge. The Society has continued to regard such efforts as constructive
ones. At the time of the First World War it contributed to the Memorial
Chapel at Valley Forge, where the Society's church service was often held,
a memorial to the soldiers of the Revolution in the form of an elaborately
carved oaken stall surmounted by a copy of the First Pennsylvania Line
Regimental Flag. In June, 1935 the Society dedicated an authentic reproduction
it had built of one of the original log huts at Valley Forge. In December,
1962 ceremonies at the Gulph Mills boulder marked completion of a slight
change in position of the monument to accommodate modern traffic conditions.
And in the summer of 1986, after extensive investigation, the monument
was moved again to a public park near the road leading through the defile
of the gulph. A listing of the Society's memorials has appeared annually
in its recent yearbooks, and a comprehensive report on the subject is
available.
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Anthony Wayne Equestrian Statue
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The Anthony Wayne Monument in Philadelphia
The most ambitious of our
efforts in memorials deserves special comment, for it occupied the Society
more or less continuously for forty-five years and culminated in a monument
visible from both the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and the Schuylkill Expressway.
In 1893 a special committee of thirteen -- one for each original state
-- was appointed to procure designs and devise means to raise moneys for
a monument to be erected in Philadelphia in honor of Pennsylvania's foremost
Revolutionary officer, Major General Anthony Wayne. With much planning
and effort a fund was assembled over many years -- slowly after the initial
burst of enthusiasm subsided. With additional contributions of only $281
in 1904 and $230 in 1906, for example, nonetheless by 1934 the sum of
$30,000 was on hand. The increase in prices through the intervening years,
and the erection of a statue of heroic proportions to Wayne at Valley
Forge in the meantime, led to a decrease in the size of the Society's
planned monument -- for which smaller size the sum collected was sufficient.
A site on the terrace of the new Museum of Art was selected and approved
by the authorities. By 1937 the Committee was able to report that a full-scale
equestrian statue in clay had been executed as a prototype. Contracts
were let for a polished granite pedestal, for the bronze casting, and
for its gold leafing by a special process deemed practically permanent.
By the spring of 1938 the statue was completed and in place. In June it
was dedicated in the presence of more than two hundred of our members.
But after thirty years in the weather, the magnificent statue needed restoration.
It was removed and entirely re-gilded, its surroundings improved, and
illumination installed in 1968.
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Another custom dating from
the earliest years was that of an annual banquet with the reading of a
paper to the Society. At first, this even took place either on October
4, the anniversary of the Battle of Germantown, or December 19, that of
going into the Encampment at Valley Forge. Gradually, this occasion came
to be combined with the Annual Meeting which always took place in April.
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