On December 19, 1777, at 10 a.m., George Washington and his Continental Army marched out of Rebel Hill and Gulph Mills, past the Hanging Rock, and on to Valley Forge.  As one historian wrote, “These grounds were the threshold to Valley Forge, and the story of that winter–a story of endurance, forbearance, and patriotism which will never grow old–had its beginnings here, at the six days encampment by the old Gulph Mill.” (see  “The Gulph Hills in the Annals of the Revolution”, by Samuel Gordon Smyth, of West Conshohocken, in an address before the Montgomery County Historical Society, at Ashbourne, Pa., October 6, 1900; address included in Historical Sketches of Montgomery County, Volume 3, Montgomery County Historical Society (1905)).

Captured in the writings of the time and iconic paintings, we know that the March to Valley Foge was largely characterized by hardship for Washington’s 11,000 soldiers. William Trego, painter of…