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Updated: June 7, 2025
Had the Commander-in-Chief detached General Knyphausen's column in pursuit early next morning, General Washington might with ease have been intercepted, either at the Heights of Crum Creek, nine miles; at Derby, fourteen; or at Philadelphia, eighteen miles, from the British camp; or, the Schuylkill might have been passed at Gray's Ferry, only seventy yards over, and Philadelphia, with the American magazines, taken, had not the pontoons been improvidently left at New York as useless.
Amongst the various officers who accompanied him, several were strangers to him; he was interested, however, for them all, and to those whose services were not accepted an indemnity for their trouble was granted. Some months afterwards, M. drowned himself in the Schuylkill, and the loss of that impetuous and imprudent man was perhaps a fortunate circumstance.
A Norristown lady who paid her a call in the little stone house that still stands beside the Schuylkill relates that "as she was said to be so grand a lady, we thought we must put on our best bibs and bands. So we dressed ourselves in our most elegant ruffles and silks, and were introduced to her ladyship. And don't you think we found her knitting with a specked apron on!
Well, I'll take you to Captain De Lance and see what he has to say to you," said the soldier, and the silent little girl, still holding the scarlet coat, was led down one street after another until she saw the shining waters of the Schuylkill River before her, and the soldier led her up the steps of an old stone house whose garden ran down to the river.
The work of settling he soon found was a plain matter-of-fact business, requiring constant and persevering labour. Some of the settlers remained at the town, others proceeded farther up the river to a spot near the confluence of the two rivers Schuylkill and Delaware.
He had a country seat on the Schuylkill and was in his way a fine character, devoted to the establishment of ecclesiasticism and higher learning as a bulwark against the menace of Quaker fanaticism; and but for the coming on of the Revolution he might have become the first colonial bishop with all the palaces, pomp, and glory appertaining thereunto.
Valley Forge is on the west side of the Schuylkill, twenty miles from Philadelphia, and this is where Col. Bigelow spent the winter of 1777-78, with his regiment, and here is where the soldiers of freedom suffered most intensely. The British general had derived no other fruit from all his recent victories, than of having procured excellent winter quarters for his army in Philadelphia.
I could see, as I rode along through the cantonment and the long lines of huts, how well chosen was the valley camp. The Schuylkill flowing from the Blue Hills turned here to eastward, the current was deep, the banks were high and precipitous. To the west, in a deep gorge, the Valley Creek protected the camp. Bunning down from Mount Joy, a broad spur turned northward to the Schuylkill.
The Upper Ferry Bridge was to the Schuylkill what the Colossus was to the harbor of Rhodes. It had an air of dash about it which went far towards redeeming the dead level of respectable average which flattens the physiognomy of the rectangular city. Philadelphia will never be herself again until another Robert Mills and another Lewis Wernwag have shaped her a new palladium.
I meant to throw myself on the first lap of verdure I should meet, and indulge in sleep that I so much wanted. I knew not the direction of the streets; but followed that which I first entered from the court, trusting that, by adhering steadily to one course, I should some time reach the fields. This street, as I afterwards found, tended to Schuylkill, and soon extricated me from houses.
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