On August 10, 1777, George Washington chose the Moland House as his headquarters while awaiting military intelligence on British naval and troop movements, with 11,000 Continental and militia soldiers encamped on farms surrounding the Little Neshaminy. This Neshaminy Encampment lasted thirteen days and was the third longest encampment in Pennsylvania. John Moland, born in London about 1700, studied law at the Inner Temple, came to Pennsylvania by way of the West Indies as King’s Attorney, and first appears in a 1737 deed referring to him as being of the Island of St. Christophers; he bought 308 acres in Rockhill Township in Upper Bucks County from Thomas Freame, husband of William Penn’s daughter Margaret, married Catherine Hutchinson of New Castle, Delaware, was admitted in 1740 as attorney of the Court of Common Pleas in Newtown, was admitted to the Philadelphia bar before 1742, and in 1741 purchased undeveloped land in Warwick Township along the Little Neshaminy Creek and adjacent to York Road. In 1777 Catherine Moland, widow of John Moland, still lived in the house Washington selected. On August 10, 1777, after receiving a dispatch from John Hancock that General William Howe’s British fleet and troops were fifty miles south of the Delaware Capes, Washington, unsure of Howe’s intentions, ordered his forces marching up York Road toward Coryell’s Ferry to encamp around the bridge over the Little Neshaminy Creek. On August 21, 1777, a Council of War met at the house; having received no intelligence for two weeks and thinking Howe had already left for Charleston, Washington decided to move north, but after Hamilton departed for Philadelphia with news of that decision, a courier arrived reporting that the British had been sighted in the Chesapeake on August 14, and another report the next day placed them high up in the Chesapeake. On August 23, 1777, Washington ordered a march toward Philadelphia, and the troops left the encampment, went back down York Road, and subsequently met the British at Brandywine. Prominent figures present during the encampment included George Washington, Nathaniel Greene, Adam Stephen, Marquis de Lafayette, Henry Knox, “Mad Anthony” Wayne, Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, Alexander Hamilton, James J. Monroe, Count Kasimir Pulaski, and John Marshall. There is also a strong possibility, though not yet fully proven, that during the encampment the thirteen-starred Betsy Ross flag was unfurled for the first time.

Photo: Don Morfe

Photo: Don Morfe

Photo: Don Morfe

Photo: Don Morfe

Photo: Don Morfe

Warminster, Pennsylvania · USA