W. Herbert Burk

W. Herbert Burk (1867-1933) was an American, Episcopalian minister and founding vicar of the Washington Memorial Chapel in the Valley Forge National Historical Park. He is known for assembling, over the course of many years, the collection of Revolutionary War artifacts that form the core of the collection of the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, and for his work to preserve Valley Forge, the site of an important Revolutionary War army encampment.

Burk was the son of Rev. Jesse Y. Burk rector of Old St Peter's Church, Clarksboro, New Jersey. He graduated form the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Divinity School (Episcopal). He was ordained in 1894, and became pastor of the Church of the Ascension in Gloucester City, then of St. John's Church, Norristown, and then of All Saint's Church, Norristown, all in New Jersey. Finally, he became rector of the Washington Memorial Chapel in Valley Forge.

Burk was married to Abbie Jessup Reeves, and widowed when she died in 1909. He later married Eleanor Hallowell Stroud.

On George Washington's Birthday in 1903, Rev. Burke, then rector of rector of All Saints' Church in Norristown, Pennsylvania, gave a sermon in which he argued that Washington's piety the center of his character and suggested building a "wayside chapel," to serve as a "fit memorial of the Church's most honored son." The sermon inspired the building of the Washington Memorial Chapel, in which Burk would serve as pastor for the rest of his life.

In 1909 Burke purchased the exterior of George Washington's tent for display in the Valley Forge Museum of American History, predecessor to the Valley Forge Historical Society. Now part of teh collection and on display at teh Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, it was formerly exhibited in a museum on the grounds of the 1777-1778 Valley Forge encampment.

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