Sheilah Vance

Thanks to author and Revolutionary War expert Margaret Denise Dennis, whose ancestors were at the Gulph Mills Encampment, for this great review of my upcoming book, Threshold to Valley Forge: The Six Days of the Gulph Mills Encampment. http://www.thresholdtovalleyforge.com

“Boston Harbor, Bunker Hill, Lexington and Concord, the Old North Bridge, Saratoga, Fort Ticonderoga, Philadelphia, Independence Hall, Valley Forge, the Delaware River, Trenton and Yorktown, are the place names that most commonly leap into our minds when we think of the American Revolution. In her new book, Threshold to Valley Forge:  The Six Days of the Gulph Mills Encampment, author Sheilah Vance adds a lesser-known, but no less significant, name to this distinguished historical geography, that of Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania and the crucial role it played in America’s War for Independence.  Meticulously researched, citing maps, official documents and the personal correspondence of such notables as Generals George Washington and Anthony “Mad Anthony” Wayne, among others, Vance brings to life the six-day encampment of Washington’s army at Gulph Mills, PA that led to the Continental Army’s brutal winter at Valley Forge, in 1777-78. 

In a compelling narrative that hold the reader’s attention, Vance writes about the days before the British took command of Philadelphia, capitol of the new United States, and the days afterward when Washington had to weigh whether or not to battle the enemy throughout the winter or give his beleaguered army a chance to rest, by camping for the season.  Vance reveals how Washington consulted his 20 generals, including the Marquis de Lafayette and Nathanial Greene, before making his decision.  For the first time, thanks to Sheilah Vance’s attention to detail, we are able to read the responses of these generals and their varying opinions, in their own words.  Their letters to Washington feel as though they were written today and through them, the reader is transported to 1777 and can feel the immediacy of the moment.  Outcomes that today seem inevitable were not, and through the narrative, readers better understand that this nation was built on a series of decisions, one after the other, with no guarantee of the result.  Threshold to Valley Forge also reveals the toll the war took on Pennsylvanians whose homes, food, and livestock were often commandeered by the British and whose everyday lives were upended by the war.  Vance grew up in the Gulph Mills area, in a place named Rebel Hill, in honor of the American encampment there.  Having read the sign marking the site, Vance was long fascinated by the history of the region and, thanks to her tireless research, is now sharing it with the rest of us, just in time for the United States’ Semiquincentennial, in 2026.”–M. Denise Dennis, a seventh-generation Pennsylvanian, is Chairwoman & CEO of The Dennis Farm Charitable Land Trust andauthor of Bristol Budd Sampson: Patriot of the American Revolution and Abel Benson: Patriot of the American Revolution. The Historic Dennis Farm received America250PA’s first Semiquincentennial Bell, in recognition of the Farm’s history and the American Revolutionary War veterans interred in the family cemetery on the site.

Read more about M. Denise’s books and The Historic Dennis Farm at https://thedennisfarm.org/.