Following the Drum: Women at the Valley Forge Encampment

Friday, December 19, 1777, dawned cold and windy. Fourteen thousand Continental Army soldiers tramped from dawn to dusk along the rutted Pennsylvania roads from Gulph Mills to Valley Forge, the site of their winter encampment. The soldiers’ arrival was followed by the army’s wagons and hundreds of camp women. Following the Drum tells the story of the forgotten women who spent the winter of 1777–78 with the Continental Army at Valley Forge—from those on society’s lowest rungs to ladies on th...