The Hammock Papers: Hunkered.

19 December 2025

Hunkered.

Trego, The March to Valley Forge, December 19, 1777, 1883

On this day in 1777, General George Washington led his army of about 11,000 men to Valley Forge, Pa., to camp for the winter.

American Battlefield Trust details the encampment ...

The army spent the night of December 18 at Gulph Mills, then marched up the road toward a prominence ironically named Mount Joy, five miles from the previous night’s encampment. Mount Joy was one of two prominent hills that provided protection for the ensuing winter encampment, the other was named Mount Misery. Both names are applicable to what the Continental Army would face during the six months at Valley Forge.

As the soldiers continued the march, a 5,000-acre plot of land unfolded in front of their vision. The area was known to locals as Valley Forge. Due to the geographic outlay of the land and the forge in operation gave the name Valley Forge. European inhabitation stretched back to the turn of the eighteenth century in the surrounding area.

The approach of the Continental Army was not the first instance of the war coming to Valley Forge. On September 18, 1777, British soldiers arrived in the area and in the ensuing two days torched the forge and accompanying buildings while confiscating any supplies that could be transported. Out of consideration of the locals, the gristmill was left undisturbed in September.

Washington’s army would spread out even more within the Valley Forge area eventually covering approximately 7,800 acres of land. Higher ranking officers fanned out to look for their winter accommodations in permanent structures that dotted the landscape. Washington’s staff selected the Isaac Potts house as his headquarters for the winter. The stone house took over two years to construct and was finished in 1770. By December 1777 the house was occupied by Mrs. Deborah Hewes, a relative of the Potts. Due to Continental law, which forbade mandatory accommodations, Washington’s staff arranged a price with Mrs. Hewes on rent.

The native Virginian hunkered down within Valley Forge to suffer, in a degree, with the wintry weather and privations faced by the rank-and-file. The encampment began on the night of December 19, the men sleeping either under the late autumn moon or under canvas tent flaps. The next morning, construction began on the more permanent winter abodes.

The details of the painting are HERE.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL