Excerpt from Whitemarsh: An Address Delivered Before the Pennsylvania Society of Sons of the Revolution at Whitemarsh, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, June 19, 1909

It was the same Continental Army, practically under the same officers, that I described to you in detail upon a former occasion when we visited its camping ground upon the banks of the Neshaminy, increased by reinforcements and depleted by the dead and wounded it had lost at Brandywine, Paoli and Germantown, and by the sick who had dropped out because of exposure and neglect. Three months had elapsed since the army left its quiet camp at Neshaminy, and withinthat time it had marched as far south as Wilmington, had suffered defeat at Brandywine, had marched as far to the west as the Warren Tavern, as far to the north as Potts Grove, and then, by easy stages down to Whitemarsh, where We now are. On its way here it had lost the Battle of Ger mantown. The right wing reached this place by the way of the Skippack Road, which lies before us, and the left wing marched down the Morris Road a few miles yonder to the north. The territory within the points I have named is known as the seat of the Revolutionary War in Pennsylvania. Through this seat of war the main army marched and coun termarched, and sent out detachments hither and thither for various purposes until the inhabitants along nearly all the roads that traversed it became familiar with the sight of its officers and men. The soldiers of the army stopped at their doors on their weary marches and the officers made their quarters in their homes. There were no bright spots in this campaign to lift up the spirits of these poorly clad and poorly fed Continentals. When they looked back over it from here they found nothing in the retrospect but discouragement and defeat. The spirit that sustained them came not from their environment. They were uplifted by the spirit that was within. In addition to all their misfortunes which were be yond control, they had just cause for the dissatisfaction that prevailed throughout the Camp arising from the unsatisfactory way in which their rank was adjusted and the unsatisfactory treatment they received from an inefficient government. The transfer of the seat of war to Pennsylvania endowed with a deep and lasting interest the places which lie aboutus, and we, as a Society composed of the descendants of the soldiers of the Revolution, do well to commemorate the events associated with these places and keep them ever fresh in the minds of the people.

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