Towamencin historians push for marker where Washington’s army ‘refreshed’

For one week, two and a half centuries ago, the fate of a young nation hung in the balance — encamped in the hills and woods of Towamencin.

Now, two local historians are starting a push for an historical marker honoring a little-known chapter in the township’s history, just in time for the nation’s 250th birthday.

“They walked in as the Continental Army, and they walked out as the ‘Grand American Army.’ That’s something I think this township should be very proud of,” said local historian Victor Verbeke of Lower Salford.

In recent years, township officials have discussed several ways to honor local veterans, including the 2022 adoption of a new master plan for developing a Veterans Memorial Park plan for land located off of Allentown Road just west of Forty Foot Road adjacent to and including the Tennis-Lukens cemetery where several Revolutionary War veterans are buried. That effort was largely led by a volunteer veterans committee, which honors the fallen in that cemetery each November. The township’s Morgan Log House on Weikel Road dates back to the early 1700s.

A new historical destination could soon appear in the township: Verbeke and Towamencin historian Brian Hagey told the supervisors on April 23 about an application they’ve filed to the state’s Historic Preservation Office, requesting an historical marker to memorialize a little-known week in township history.

“On October 7, 1777, General Washington wrote to the president of the Continental Congress, John Hancock: ‘My intention is to encamp the army at some suitable place, to rest and refresh the men, and recover them from the still-remaining effects of that disorder, naturally attended on a retreat,’” said Verbeke.

“General Washington, and 11,000 of the Continental soldiers, spent eight days here, from October 8th of 1777 to October 16th of 1777. Eight whole days. And there were no battles fought here, but there were some significant events that this township, and Lower Salford, can be proud of,” he said.

    A 1777 hand drawn Continental Army map “Roads About Skippack and Germantown” from Schwenksville to ..Whitemarsh showing Continental Army encampments from late Sept. to mid-December 1777. Towamencin ..Township (center of the map within the red line) is where General Washington’s headquarters was located at the ..Frederick Wampole house October 8-16, 1777. (Image courtesy of Brian Hagey, original document via Historical Society of Pennsylvania)
  

Local history discovered

As a pandemic project in 2021, Verbeke told the township supervisors on April 23, he started researching local history, and was looking up Colonial-era General Francis Nash whose name now adorns an elementary school in the township, when he found a 20-page article by Hagey. In that article, first published in 2016 and subsequently updated in 2024 and posted on the township’s website, Hagey quotes a diary kept by local farmer George Lukens during the young nation’s first days:

The war that began in Lexington, Massachusetts on April 19, 1775, over a year before independence was declared, eventually made its way to Towamencin. Although no battles were fought in Towamencin, residents became personally involved in the American War for Independence when General Washington moved his headquarters and most of the Continental Army from various local townships to Towamencin on the morning of October 8, 1777.

On that cool autumn day, nature’s peaceful and timeless sounds along the Skippack Creek were briefly interrupted as thousands of soldiers marched east on the Skippack Road from Schwenksville, fording the muddy banks of the Skippack Creek, while others came up from Skippack and still more westward from Worcester along the Skippack Road. They all merged into one large army of thousands marching along the present-day Old Forty Foot Road, crossing the Great Road, also referred to as the North Wales Road (present day Sumneytown Pike) with horses and rattling wagons arriving all day onto quiet Towamencin fields.

    Fredrick Wampole’s 1755 barn (seen here around 1960 and razed in 1979) on the farm where General George Washington stablished his headquarters in Towamencin Township in Oct. 1777. The historic Wampole farmhouse was in the foreground to the right just out of the photograph. (Photo courtesy of Brian Hagey)
  

What a sight and sound that must have been to Towamencin farm families, including eight-year-old George Lukens and his siblings, on an otherwise quiet autumn day. The population of Towamencin at that time was about 390 people. Within the course of a few days, approximately 11,000 soldiers had moved into the township. It would not be until the census of 1980 that the population of Towamencin would again be as large!

“The residents of this township, back in the day, on both sides of the Skippack Creek, welcomed these soldiers, most importantly fed these soldiers, and provided them with what General Washington specifically told John Hancock: ‘Rest and refresh my men,’” Verbeke said.

    The 1777 Continental Army map enlarged to show the Towamencin area. In addition to Frederick Wampole’s farmhouse (Washington’s headquarters within the red line), the map shows the Samuel Tennis, and Benjamin Fuller farmhouses in Towamencin Township as well as Joseph Lukens’ home and inn along the Sumneytown Pike. Also seen are the Klein (Harleysville), Jacob Wentz (Worcester), and Humphrey Hughes (Upper Gwynedd) Taverns, as well as Bean’s and Kuster’s (Skippack area) Mills. (Image courtesy of Brian Hagey, original document via Historical Society of Pennsylvania)
  

Continental Army details

In time the two connected, then partnered on an application to the state’s Historic Preservation Office on the request they presented to the supervisors: for a marker on Wambold Road indicating the spot where the army camped that week.

“This is a receipt General Washington and his staff gave to Frederick Wambold, on the evening of October 15th, 1777, because they would be leaving the next morning. And it’s a receipt for all of the items he used,” said Hagey, showing an enlarged photo of a handwritten invoice.

“The first was for: one calf, 56 gallons of milk, 45 heads of cabbage — yummy — 520 pounds of flour, that’s two-and-a-half barrels; a lot of potatoes, onions, 25 chickens, and honey. Those are all of the things General Washington and his staff needed to survive that week. The other is a 1777 Continental Army map — we don’t know who it was, but it was obviously done by an officer, because there are a lot of Continental name son there that the general public would have no idea about,” he said.

    General Washington’s personal account book also shows Frederick Wampole was paid an additional 1 pound 17shillings and six pence for the inconvenience of his house used as military headquarters. (Image courtesy of Brian Hagey, original document via U.S. Library of Congress)
  

Faded but recognizable, that map shows Plymouth Road, Bethlehem Road (now Pike), ‘Great Turnpike Road to Allen Town’ now Allentown Road, and Forty Foot Road, with several tents in the center and other markings that could indicate churches.

“At the very center, it says ‘George Washington Headquarters: Towamencin.  That’s right there, on Detwiler Road near Delp Drive,” Hagey said.

Skippack Creek encampments

Based on research they’ve uncovered, Verbeke added, the army recovering from the Battle of Germantown may have had encampments from Sumneytown Pike, up the Skippack Creek as far as today’s Fretz Road, on both sides of the creek. Placing a marker in the area could help teach local students about the area’s ties to the nation’s founding, Verbeke said, and might spur further research.

“Whether it’s North Penn or Souderton (school districts): if there are any teachers in the audience or at home, and you’re hearing this, the opportunities are so great to bring this information to our young students,” Verbeke said.

    An itemized receipt dated Oct. 15, 1777 signed by Frederick Wambold of Towamencin. (Image courtesy of Brian Hagey, original documents via Library of Congress)
  

“My kids went through Souderton, and this was not brought to their attention. There’s an opportunity to share this with our young people, and I think they would be very interested in knowing about the hanging on the Skippack Creek, that General Washington had to order of a deserter. That took place along the Skippack Creek,” he said.

Nash and three soldiers from that army are buried in the area, and another major happening during the encampment: key news arrived from a state away.

“When this army marched into your township, on October 8th, they were the Continental Army. But while they were here, on this ground, this hallowed ground, on October 15, the last day of the encampment, General Washington received good news,” Verbeke said.

    Excerpt from ‘The Continental Army at Headquarters: Towamensing’ by Brian Hagey, showing a mile marker along Allentown Road and Fredrick Wampole’s 1755 barn (razed in 1979) on the farm where General George Washington established his headquarters in Towamencin in Oct. 1777. (Image courtesy of Brian Hagey)
  

Shelter for 11,000 men

“General Gates had defeated General Burgoyne at the Battle of Saratoga on October 7th.It took a week for that news to come down from Saratoga, New York. And then Washington ordered 13 pieces of cannon be discharged at the artillery park. This was Washington’s own words: ‘The General wishes them to consider that this is the grand American army, and that of course, great things are expected from it.’ I believe that this is the first time that General Washington wrote the words ‘Grand American Army’ in his orders. And he wrote them right here, in your township, at the Wambold Farm.”

Also worth noting, the two added: at the time, the township’s population totaled only a few hundred, while the army that passed through was larger than all but a handful of cities in the new nation.

“For this week, there were only three other places in the country that had a higher population than right here, on the Skippack Creek. One was Philadelphia: it had 40,000. Number two: New York had 25,000; and Boston had 15,000. Number four, for one week in 1777: Towamencin Township, and Lower Salford, sheltered 11,000 men, and everything that comes with them,” Verbeke said.

Local historians Victor Verbeke of Lower Salford, left, and Brian Hagey of Towamencin speak to the township supervisors while showing a map where George Washington and the Continental Army reportedly encamped in the township in Oct. 1777, during the township supervisors meeting on April 23, 2025. (Screenshot of meeting video)

Commemoration anticipated

Township supervisor Joyce Snyder asked if the pair thought it would make more sense to have an observation in 2027, marking 250 years since the encampment, rather than in 2026 for the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and the duo said they’d be open to either or both.

“Plus, it gives the township an extra year to plan,” Snyder said.

Open space and parks committee chairman Joe Meehan added that that group and the township’s veterans committee were both “very interested” in the marker and holding celebrations, and publicized the story in a recent township newsletter.

“The Veterans Committee is very interested in doing something in 2027. We’re not gonna overlook 2026, but the township is taking that on their shoulders. 2027, the Veterans Committee has said ‘Let us take that on, and make it a celebration of the veterans,’ and the Revolutionary army that was here at that time. It hasn’t gotten very far yet, but they are working on it,” Meehan said.

Meehan then added another fun fact Hagey uncovered.

“Brian’s research pointed out that, while George Washington was in Towamencin, he got a haircut. It’s in his actual diary,” Meehan said, and Hagey added: “It’s in his account book, two shillings, it was the going rate.”

    A Towamencin mile marker along the Allentown Road stating 26 miles to Philadelphia. (Photo courtesy of Brian Hagey)
  

Early ideas include that kids could reenact that haircut during the anniversary, and/or could camp out along the creek during that week, Meehan added, and Verbeke said he plans to make a similar presentation to Lower Salford in the near future to enlist their support and input. Resident Joe Silverman asked if the pair had been in contact with family members who live in the area now and may be descendants of those who lived there in the colonial era, and the two said they’d be open to working with them too.

Supervisor Kofi Osei added that he also grew up a history buff, thanks to the namesake elementary school.

“I went to General Nash, and have always been fascinated with all of the Revolutionary War history here. Thanks for highlighting this: I think this will be great for 2027,” he said.

For more information, contact Hagey at [email protected] or follow “Towamencin History” on Facebook.

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