When Edward Pinkowski, Philadelphia historian, is on the scent of something important, he just won't quit.
Last February, the Valley Forge Park Commission scoffed at his assertions that a stone masonry building in the park was once the quarters of Gen. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben. And they tore the structure down.
Unperturbed, Pinkowski cited evidence that the Prussian drillmaster switched quarters four times during Gen. George Washington's Valley Forge encampment, 1777-1778, living for a while in the two-story "Mansion House."
TURNS TO HARRISBURG
When the commissioners refused to listen, and continued plans to restore the house as a camp hospital, Pinkowski took the matter to the State Legislature.
The commissioners planned the hospital restoration with a $71,000 appropriation from the General State Authority. Pinkowski enlisted the support of State Rep. John Pezak (D., Philadelphia), who introduced a resolution in the General Assembly to change the designation. A panel of experts, assembled by Pinkowski and Pezak to study the findings, agreed with them, and submitted an evaluation report to the House of Representatives and the park commissioners.
AWARDS PLANNED
Authenticity apparently triumphed, and the commissioners agreed to adopt the new name.
Pinkowski and Pezak will receive awards Saturday at the annual banquet of the Philadelphia chapter of the Steuben Society of America, meeting at the Philadelphia Rifle Club, 8th st. and Tabor rd.
Pinkowski, author of "Washington's Officers Slept Here," a book on Valley Forge, said the renamed house was built before the war by millwright James White.
He said a journal kept by Steuben's aide-de-camp, Capt. Peter S. Duponceau, showed that Steuben occupied the building on April 20, 1778.
TRAINED TROOPS
Drillmaster Steuben was credited with turning Washington's ill-equipped soldiers into professional fighting men. Experts gathered by Pinkowski and Pezak to study the evidence, included Dale Fields, executive director of the Historical Society of Delaware; Judge Edward LeRoy van Roden, of Delaware County Orphans Court, and Dr. Austin J. App, of La Salle College.
Also, Dr. Arthur James, president of the Chester county Historical Society, and the late David Taylor, former historian of the Freedoms Foundation, Valley Forge.
Karl Schumacher, chairman of the Steuben Society's historic sites committee, said plans will be revealed at the banquet for furnishing the house with colonial period furniture from German castles. |