Editor’s note: Pennsylvania and New Jersey have played a key role in the nation’s 250-year history. While most are familiar with the events that happened in Philadelphia, our region also played a pivotal role in the development of the fledgling nation. In honor of the country’s 250th anniversary celebration, we will feature some of the places, people and events in the region that helped shape America’s history.
In early 1778, as Gen. George Washington endured the brutal Valley Forge winter, a new field headquarters tent — his mobile command center for the remainder of the Revolutionary War — was crafted in Reading.
Long overshadowed by the larger drama of the encampment, the tent’s origins in Reading reveal a local contribution to the nation’s founding that has only recently received the recognition it deserves, historians say.
“Washington’s tent was his command center during the Revolutionary War, and tells the story of his inspiring leadership, unyielding determination, and steadfast devotion to his troops,” Michael Quinn, then-president and CEO of the Museum of the American Revolution, said in an announcement of the 2017 opening of the museum near Independence Hall in Philadelphia. “It is a powerful symbol of American freedom, and one that we are thrilled to be able to preserve for future generations.”
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The 23-by-14-foot tent, made of linen canvas, is the centerpiece of the collection at the museum.
The tent, often called “the first Oval Office,” served as Washington’s office, sleeping quarters and strategic hub from 1778 to 1783. It traveled with him through the war’s most consequential moments, including the Siege of Yorktown, according to Dr. R. Scott Stephenson, the museum’s current president and CEO.
“This was Gen. Washington’s only private space,” Stephenson told the Reading Eagle in 2017, when he served as museum vice president of collections. “It’s where he went to write letters depicting the highs and lows of the American Revolution.”
Research by Stephenson and others documented that the tent was made in Reading and delivered to Washington’s Valley Forge encampment in 1778.
Among the documents supporting this finding were the letters of James Abeel, deputy to Quartermaster Gen. Nathanael Greene.
Abeel’s letters refer to a “set of marquee,” as the large tent was referred to, being made in Reading. And that women in Reading sewed the red trim on the tent’s canopy.
Washington had worn out his tents in 1776 and 1777, Stephenson said, and had a new set commissioned for 1778.
The structure was a sophisticated, multichambered canvas marquee divided into an office, Washington’s sleeping area and a space for his enslaved valet, William Lee. Inside these linen walls, Washington drafted dispatches, met with aides such as Alexander Hamilton, and shaped the military decisions that would ultimately secure American independence.
After the war, the tent returned to Washington’s Mount Vernon estate and passed through generations of the Custis and Lee families. During the Civil War, it narrowly escaped destruction when Union troops seized Arlington House before taking possession of the tent and other artifacts. Decades later, the Lee family fought a lengthy legal battle to reclaim the tent.
(COURTESY OF MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION)
The battlefield tent of Gen. George Washington featured three rooms and was made in Reading and delivered to the Continental Army encampment at Valley Forge in 1778, according to the Museum of the American Revolution where the restored tent has served as the featured exhibit since it opened in 2017. (COURTESY OF MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION)
In 1909, the Rev. W. Herbert Burk purchased the tent from Mary Custis Lee for $5,000 — funds he raised from ordinary Americans — to anchor a museum dedicated to the nation’s founding story, according to the museum. Burk considered it the “supreme relic of Washington,” and it became the centerpiece of the Valley Forge Historical Society, the predecessor of today’s Museum of the American Revolution.
Today, Washington’s tent is the signature artifact of the Museum of the American Revolution. Installed in 2017 after a years‑long conservation effort, the tent is displayed in a dedicated 100‑seat theater.
Virginia Whelan, a textile conservator, spent 500 hours preserving the tent’s hand-stitched linen. The restoration project — believed to be one of the most complex textile preservation efforts in generations — earned a 2017 Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Award for Preservation Planning.
Encased behind glass in a climate-controlled case at the museum, the tent is part of a 10-minute presentation in a 100-seat theater.
The museum describes the tent as the heart and soul of its collection, and more than 1 million visitors have viewed it since its installation.