Francis Brooke Collection
Francis Brooke, a descendant of General Anthony Wayne, was a successful champion for the Valley Forge Park movement. Brooke was a state legislator and committee chairman. In 1892, he began lobbying Harrisburg for legislation to establish a state at park at Valley Forge, which resulted in a bill signed by Governor Robert E. Pattison in 1893 creating the Valley Forge Park Commission. The Valley Forge Park Commission was a ten-man committee whose members were directly appointed by the governor for five-year terms with no compensation. It met for the first time on June 17, 1893, at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and elected Francis Brooke as their president.
The original task of the park commission was to establish the boundaries of this park by determining exactly where Washington had positioned his men and built his defensive earthworks. Its ongoing tash was to preserve this land forever as nearly as possible in its “original condition as a military camp.”
L.M. Haupt , Civil Engineer
During the first meeting of the Valley Forge Park Commission, L.M. Haupt, was elected as the Engineer for commission. In order that the Commission could have full knowledge of the location and surroundings of the entrenchments and redoubts they had their engineer (L.M. Haupt) make a careful topographical survey of all the ground between the Schuylkill River, the Valley Creek, and a line extending from the former to the latter along the Washington Lane, showing ten feet contours, with property lines, owners names.