“BOTH LUCYS ARRIVED IN perfect health and are situated in my hut in the center of the park, perhaps better situated than any other ladies in Camp,” Henry Knox boasted in a letter to his brother William May 27, 1778. The “park” was Valley Forge, at whose center stood Knox’s log hut, adjacent to his artillery center in which stood cannons, howitzers, and field pieces.1 While Knox spent his days training his men, Lucy visited with wives of other officers, watched her daughter play with their youngsters, and helped Martha Washington sew shirts and knit stockings for soldiers. She also admired the portrait of “her Harry,” painted by the artist Captain Charles Willson Peale, along with those he had done of Washington, Nathanael Greene, and Clement Biddle, commissary general at Valley Forge. Evenings were spent with officers and their wives in communal song fests. Yet, as Knox predicted to William, neither Lucy nor their toddler could enjoy camp life for long, “because the army was preparing for action.”2 By then the soldiers of Valley Forge were no longer starving, ill-trained men but had been transformed into sturdy warriors.
