History

New York Times bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick will appear at Washington Crossing Historic Park (PA) on Wednesday, September 15 at 7 PM for a lecture, Q&A, and signing of his new book, Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy, which will be released the day before his appearance. Tickets are available now on our website. Ticket price is pay-what-you-wish with proceeds benefiting the non-profit Friends of Washington Crossing Park. Suggested minimum donation is $15 per person. Tickets do not include the new book. You may purchase one copy of the book along with your tickets for an Read More

By park historical interpreter Thomas Maddock As I led my led my first tour out of the temporary Visitors Center on July of 2009, it was like déjà vu. As I looked out at the Washington Crossing Historic Park, my memory slipped back to the late thirties and early forties. My parents had rented a large wooden house from the State, right on the banks for the Delaware River. My parents had moved to the park in 1935, right after their wedding. I moved in a year later, followed by four siblings. My memories of growing up in the park Read More

If you’ve spent any time at the Thompson-Neely Farmstead, you’ve likely seen the beloved sheep and goats that call Washington Crossing Historic Park their home. The flock of eleven sheep features several heritage breeds that could have been found in colonial America. Five are Leicester Longwool, an English breed developed in the 18th century and found in George Washington’s flock at Mount Vernon. This breed was once popular in early America, but nearly went extinct in the 1900s. It’s now considered “threatened” by the Livestock Conservancy. The flock also has three Dorset sheep and one Cotswold – both are English Read More

Most of our pantries contain a five-pound bag of flour from the grocery store. Although you can purchase flour ground at the park’s Thompson-Neely Grist Mill, locally ground flour is fairly rare in the twenty-first century. Not so in George Washington’s day. From a family’s kitchen table to Washington’s army, let’s take a look back at how grain products – and the mills that made them – played an essential role in colonial life. The Power of Flour It’s hard to overstate the importance of flour and cornmeal in the 1770s. Both could be used in many different ways. In Read More

Bill Farkas outside the Washington Crossing Historic Park Visitor Center (photo by Peter Osborne)   Bill Farkas has left a legacy to Washington Crossing Historic Park…again. Upon his death last year at the age of 82, Bill left a sizeable donation in his estate to the Friends of Washington Crossing Park. The money will be used to support public education and programming at the park far into the future. This donation was Bill’s second significant gift to the park. The first came a little less than 10 years when he commissioned author Peter Osborne to write a book documenting the Read More

Photo of The Old Barracks Museum by William M. Brown   Upon defeating the Hessians in the First Battle of Trenton on December 26, 1776, General George Washington immediately faced a critical decision: what to do with his new captives. The Continental Army had captured not just the roughly 900 Hessian officers and soldiers who surrendered, but also their wives and children. “The Hessians, like any 18th-century army, had camp followers. They appeared to be living in the Old Barracks,” explains William “Larry” Kidder, author of Crossroads of the Revolution: Trenton 1774-1783, which the park’s book club will begin reading Read More

Many modern-day Pennsylvanians grow vegetable, herb and flower gardens, but few of us rely on them to stock our pantries or medicine cabinets. For families in colonial-era Pennsylvania, however, the kitchen garden was an important aspect of day-to-day life and a necessary source of food and medicine. Let’s explore how a colonial-era family used their gardens and what a typical day of garden work entailed. A Woman’s Work In the spring, summer and early fall, it would be common to find a colonial Pennsylvania woman tending her kitchen garden in the early morning. The kitchen garden – a small plot of land beside her home Read More

When you consider all that General George Washington and his men endured in crossing the Delaware on Christmas night 1776, it’s easy to gloss over the logistics, including their watercraft. But it took many boats to move the soldiers from one side of the river to the other: roughly 20 Durham boats in all, and untold numbers of other kinds. The History of Durham Boats The first Durham boat is believed to have been built around 1730. At its height, “there was a fleet of a thousand Durham boats on the Delaware giving employment to several thousand men whose job Read More