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Valley Forge

By Reg Morris

The two illustrated covers were bed fellows plucked from a miscellaneous box of commemorative covers at a local stamp show.

To be sure, they were philatelically inspired, but the existence of many small machines would not have been recorded had it not been for the postal commemoration of an ephemeral local event.

At the time of purchase it was thought that they both celebrated the same event -- the 175th anniversary of the Washington encampment at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, on December 19, 1777, although my history book does not make it clear what happened on December 19th to merit an anniversary other than it was eight days after Washington retired to Valley Forge for the winter. Can anyone enlighten me?

Editor’s Note: Reg’s mini-article has been around, waiting for me to find the answer. By luck, at a local library annual book sale, a two volume set entitled A NEW AGE NOW BEGINS by Page Smith (McGraw- Hill Book Company 1976) at page 997 answers Reg’s question, "On the night of December 19 the army arrived at Valley Forge . . .", quoting a letter from a soldier who was there. From a visit to Valley Forge during the Bicentennial, I recall touring Washington’s quarters there. He had to rent a small farm house, and it would appear he had to go there first to make the arrangements, hence the delay between his arrival and the army’s.

The 1952 cover has a datestamp and cachet that compliment each other. Both celebrate December 19th, 175 years later. But what about the 1932 cover? George Washington was born on 22 February 1732, so a postmark dated 19 December 1932 is irrelevant. But then it dawned on me that it was an old surplus and unused envelope with cachet produced to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Washington, converted to a more marketable collectable by applying a bicentennial year cachet drawing attention to the 1777 December encampment.

However the historical questions posed by the cachets were not really the reason for my profligate purchase. It was simply nice to acquire a matching pair of Valley Forge (population 950) machine cancels dated 20 years apart from different machines.

The 1952 example is the product of an International hand driven HD2 machine while the 1932 example is the product of a Columbia -- Ielfield hand cranked canceller.

Note the absence / presence of the period in the datestamps after "FORGE" and the different forms of the wavy line cancellers.

The December 19th date is the most frequently found cancel date with a Valley Forge postmark.

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8/29/20, 4:07 PM

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