The blacksmith’s hammer rings through the summer air. Horses stamp impatiently outside the forge while men gather in courthouse squares and meetinghouses, reading the latest dispatches from Philadelphia and New York. Along dusty roads stretching from the Brandywine to the Schuylkill, farmers leave fields half-tended to drill with local militia companies. Mothers sew shirts and gather blankets. Wagons creak beneath loads of flour and supplies bound for soldiers they may never see again.
It is 1776, and Chester County is preparing for war.
No musket fire echoes through its valleys that year. No armies march across its fields. No famous battle fixes the county’s name in the national imagination…