It was not the first time he had revisited the former winter camp. That had occurred almost a decade earlier, during a recess in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Then, George Washington and his old friend Gouverneur Morris, both delegates at the convention, had decided to test the trout of Valley Creek on a sunny July afternoon. Tiring of the fishing, Washington had left Morris to his casting to, as he put it, “ride the old Cantonment,” and take in the ruins. On his circuit he had reined his horse on Valley Forge’s outskirts to speak to a passel of farmers about their planting methods and harvest yields. He took notes, planning to put their crop lore to good use at Mount Vernon as soon as he returned home.
Now, in the late summer of 1796, seven months shy of the end of his second and final presidential term, Washington had returned once again for a final look around. He loped out of Philadelphia by himself, clad in a simple black linen suit. The fields where the dilapidated huts had once stood were now in cultivation, and he spied a man tilling a plot near the French engineer Louis Duportail’s decaying redoubts. The plowman introduced himself as Edward Woodman. He was originally from North Carolina, Woodman told the stranger, and said that he had been stationed here during the horrible winter of 1777–1778.
Farmer Woodman allowed that he had been honorably discharged from the Continental Army in 1782. He described how, on his way home from the Hudson Highlands, he had decided to pass by Valley Forge to visit a Quaker family whom he’d befriended lo those years ago. He’d taken sick while visiting his friends, and as they nursed him back to health he had fallen in love and married the family’s eldest daughter. Woodman had not been a farmer before the war, but had since learned a few tricks. The stranger was eager to hear them. Come spring he would be heading home to his own Virginia farm, he told Woodman, and would be glad to experiment with any planting practices he could pick up.
It was likely that the mention of Virginia shook Woodman’s memory. He stared for a moment, and then apologized profusely for not immediately recognizing his old commander in chief. George Washington but smiled and tipped his hat. Then he spurred his horse and waved adieu. He still had business, he said, to attend to in Philadelphia.