George Washington's tent

General George Washington used a pair of campaign tents (marquees) throughout much of the American Revolutionary War. In warm weather, he used one for dining with his officers and aides, and the other as his military office and sleeping quarters. Canvas panels and poles from both tents survive, and are currently owned by four separate historical organizations.

Washington's headquarters staff consisted of his military secretary and (usually) four aides-de-camp. The office tent was their workplace, where they managed the commander-in-chief's correspondence and made copies of his orders. A divided section of the tent was where Washington slept. His enslaved valet William Lee also slept there. The dining tent was used for meals. Washington's first pair of campaign tents were made by Philadelphia upholsterer Plunket Fleeson in Spring 1776. They were used at the May-June, 1777 encampment at Middlebrook, New Jersey:

“The Army is now drawn together at this place, at least that part of it, which have been Cantoned all Winter in this state. The whole of them now Encamped in Comfortable Tents on a Valley covered in front and rear by ridges which affords us security. His excellency our good Old General, has also spread his Tent, and lives amongst us."

The first pair of tents were used until the end of the 1777-78 winter encampment at Valley Forge. New tents were ordered by Deputy Quartermaster General James Abeel in June 1778, but the maker was not identified.

There were two marquées attached to the headquarters during all the campaigns. The larger, or banqueting tent, would contain from forty to fifty persons; the smaller, or sleeping tent, had an inner-chamber, where, on a hard cot-bed, the chief reposed. Within its venerable folds, Washington was in the habit of seeking privacy and seclusion, where he could commune with himself, and where he wrote the most memorable of his despatches in the Revolutionary war.

Both tents' panels and poles were inherited by Martha Washington's grandson, George Washington Parke Custis. He passed them on to his daughter, Mary Anna Custis Lee, and her husband, Robert E. Lee. Their enslaved housekeeper, Selina Norris Gray, kept the tent fabric safe when Union Army soldiers ransacked Arlington House during the American Civil War. The tents were among the Washington artifacts seized by the federal government in January 1862, and the grounds of Arlington House were converted into Arlington National Cemetery.

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Wikipedia