Revolutionary War Soldier's Grave Marker
Perkiomen Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Maj. Edward Sherburne of New Hampshire Aide to General John Sullivan Wounded at Germantown Oct. 4, 1777 Died Sunday Evening Oct. 5, 1777
The Story
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.
Why it matters
It puts a single name and a single day to the human cost of the Revolution, marking where one of Washington's officers gave his life in the fight for independence.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the autumn of 1777, the Revolution had reached one of its grimmest stretches. The British had taken Philadelphia, then the young nation's capital, and George Washington's Continental Army was maneuvering through the Pennsylvania countryside outside the occupied city, looking for a chance to strike back.
That chance came at Germantown, on the northern edge of Philadelphia, on October 4, 1777. Washington launched an ambitious dawn attack meant to catch the British off guard. It was a bold plan, and for a time it seemed it might work — before fog, confusion, and stiff resistance turned the day against the Americans.
This grave marker sits in the Pennsylvania countryside, in the same broad landscape through which the armies moved that fall. It marks not a battlefield but a resting place — the human aftermath of a single hard day of fighting.
People & events
The soldier remembered here is Major Edward Sherburne of New Hampshire, an aide-de-camp to General John Sullivan. Being an aide to a general was no safe desk posting in this war. Staff officers carried orders across chaotic, smoke-filled fields, rode where the fighting was thickest, and made themselves conspicuous targets in the process.
Sherburne was wounded at Germantown on October 4, 1777, and, as the marker records, died the following evening. Behind that plain sequence lies a very old and very human story: a young officer struck down in battle, surviving a single day, and dying far from the New Hampshire home he had left to serve the cause.
He served under General Sullivan, one of Washington's active field commanders during the Philadelphia campaign. But the marker rightly keeps its focus narrow — on one man, one wound, and two dates. It is a personal memorial, not a battle map.
Its place in the American story
The Revolution is often told through its famous names and its turning points. Markers like this one tell it a different way — one grave, one officer, one autumn evening at a time. They remind us that independence was purchased in individual lives.
Germantown itself mattered to the larger war. Though Washington's army did not win the day, the boldness of the attack — coming so soon after other setbacks — helped convince observers at home and abroad that the Continental Army was a serious, resilient force. That impression fed into the crucial foreign support the cause would soon gain.
Sherburne was one of many who did not live to see any of it. To stand at his grave is to be reminded that the words in the founding documents rested on the willingness of ordinary young men to ride into fire and, sometimes, not come back.
If you visit
Approach this as a quiet, personal stop rather than a grand historic site. The power here is in its plainness — a single officer's name, a rank, a general he served, and the two dates that bracket the end of his life.
Take a moment to read those dates against each other: wounded one day, gone the next. That short span says more about the cost of the Philadelphia campaign than any statistic could. It puts a face and a name to a war that can otherwise feel like a distant sweep of events.
If you're touring Revolutionary sites in the Philadelphia region, this makes a fitting counterpoint to the better-known battlefields and monuments. Come with respect, as you would to any grave, and let the smallness of the memorial be exactly the point.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Edward Sherburne
- · John Sullivan
Related events
- · Battle of Germantown
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Pennypacker's Mill and Mansion
Perkiomen Township, PA · est. 1946
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.
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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