250 year old Revolutionary War sketch just found hanging on a wall

It’s not often a piece of 250 year old history is found just hanging around in the open. That’s the story of this sketch from the Revolutionary War. The artist was drawing a moment in time of the North Carolina Line. It’s variously described in news articles as the “George Washington Brigade”, but I can’t find reference to which regiment or battalion (which were sometimes called brigades) that refers to.

The drawing appears to show the brigade on the move. You can see soldiers and some ladies in a wagon who are probably camp followers. Camp followers were a group of people (mostly women) that, as their name implies, followed the soldiers around. Most well-known are that some of the women were prostitutes, separating lonely young men from a bit of their government pay. Some things never change. Other camp followers would be nurses, cooks, and cleaners.

Here’s the story of the sketch’s rediscovery. From WRAL;

Sketch of Revolutionary NC brigade discovered hanging on NY wall

The back story of how the 249-year-old sketch was discovered could be as interesting as the piece itself.

The rectangular drawing of a revolutionary war brigade out of North Carolina was created in Pennsylvania.

Looking at it now, the sketch looks significant sitting behind museum glass. But just three years ago, it was considered a novel antique store find, hanging on a collector’s wall.

Historian Matthew Skic said he was in collector, Judith Hernstadt’s New York home when she happened to show him a sketch she’d picked up at an antique store in the 1970s.

“I look on the wall, she points it out, and my jaw is on the floor with what I was seeing, and this small sketch on paper. The ink and the paper struck me as this looks like it’s from the 18th century, from the 1700s. I was looking at the scene, seeing soldiers, a wagon, horses, and it looked like a military scene, and an army on the move,” Skic said.

Skic oversees collections at the Museum of the American Revolution and immediately noticed the figure in a fringed hunting shirt, commonly worn by soldiers in George Washington’s Army. He got permission to remove the framed sketch from the wall and saw a faint inscription.

“It said, ‘An exact representation of a wagon belonging to the North Carolina brigade of Continental troops, which passed through Phila,’ and then the mat had cut off the rest of the inscription,” he recalled.

What he had discovered was one of only a dozen known eye-witness accounts of George Washington’s Army. An eye-witness account is considered something captured in the moment, not commissioned or created after an event.

“We didn’t have a camera. There’s no record of what, what they looked like, action scenes,” said Ansley Herring Wegner, who runs the state’s historical research and publications.

She spoke to the rarity of finding an eye-witness account of Washington’s troops.

“Well, George Washington had just recently said, ‘Do not allow camp followers on the carts, because it really slows everything down. It gums up the works.’ Well, North Carolina, ‘You can’t tell us what to do,’ so they’re there on the cart, and there’s wounded soldiers on the back,” Herring Wegner said.

Immediately after the discovery, Skic went to work. He found headlines from August 1777 when the brigade marched through Philadelphia and traced the route they took. Then, he researched skilled artists in town at the time and landed on Pierre Eugene du Simitiere.

“So I studied his handwriting among his papers at the Library Company in Philadelphia, and [found it] matches his handwriting,” he said.

Whether many Americans know it or not, we are familiar with du Simitiere’s work. It was his idea in an application to design the U.S. Seal that gave us our national motto.

“His design was ultimately rejected, but one of the elements of his design for that seal, which he submitted in 1776 was the motto, e pluribus unum, which we still use today. That’s the motto of the United States; Out of many, one.

The sketch was on display at the Capitol for one day. However, the conditions were not favorable for a long-term stay. Visitors can see it when it goes to the North Carolina Museum of Art from May 20 to Aug. 1.

The original owner, Judith Hernstadt, has donated the sketch to the Museum of the American Revolution. The presentation of the sketch at the Capitol building is part of North Carolina’s celebration of America’s 250th. Learn more about the sketch at the state’s website for the country’s milestone.

Bravo to Ms. Hernstadt for donating it instead of trying to make a buck.

Category: Army, Historical