Pennypacker's Mill and Mansion
Perkiomen Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Washington's headquarters, September, October 1777. Last home of Samuel W. Pennypacker, Governor of Pennsylvania, 1903-1907. He died here September 2, 1916.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
This Montgomery County house served as George Washington's headquarters in the autumn of 1777, during the fraught campaign around Philadelphia in the Revolutionary War. Generations later it became the beloved home of Samuel W. Pennypacker, who served as governor of Pennsylvania in the early 1900s and died here in 1916. Few homes can claim to have sheltered both a founding general and a modern governor beneath one roof.
Why it matters
The site links two eras of Pennsylvania leadership, the Revolution that created the nation and the Progressive Era that reformed it, in a single enduring home.
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Related people
- · George Washington
- · Samuel W. Pennypacker
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Revolutionary War Soldier's Grave Marker
Perkiomen Township, PA
In the autumn of 1777, George Washington's army fought a costly battle at Germantown just outside British-held Philadelphia. Among the wounded was Major Edward Sherburne of New Hampshire, an aide to General John Sullivan, who was struck down on October 4 and died the following evening. This grave marker remembers a young staff officer whose service ended far from home in the war's brutal Philadelphia campaign.
Washington Revolutionary War Encampment Monument
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During the tense weeks around the Battle of Germantown in the fall of 1777, George Washington marched his army through the Pennsylvania countryside, camping at Pennypacker Mills in late September and again in early October. Washington made his headquarters in the house of Samuel Pennypacker while the Continental Army rested and regrouped nearby. This stone, placed by the Historical Society of Montgomery County in 1897, marks the ground where that encampment stood.
Muhlenberg House
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This Trappe house was the home of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, the German-born pastor often called the organizer of the Lutheran church in America, who lived here from 1776 until his death in 1787. His son Peter Muhlenberg — famous for reportedly shedding his clerical robes to reveal a Continental uniform — went on to become a general in the Revolution and later lived in the same house. Under one roof the family joined the story of American religion to the story of American independence.
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