Revolutionary War landmark fights on for survival

Tucked away in a leafy corner of Bucks County, the Moland House commemorates 13 stressful days that George Washington and his Continental Army spent there during the Revolutionary War.

It also recalls another bygone era: when Washington and Harrisburg had more money to fund historical preservation.

The government programs that two decades ago helped salvage the 18th-century farmhouse - it had become a teenage hangout, replete with spray-painted pentagrams - have been gutted since the economic downturn. The 12-acre Warwick Township site hasn't received a public dollar in years.

But the Moland House survives, buoyed by donations, a volunteer staff, and events such as a yearly Revolutionary War reenactment, held this year on Aug. 15.

"We try to be as frugal as possible," said Dave Mullen, board president of the Warwick Township Historical Society, which runs the Moland House. "I find myself and the other tour guides no longer saying, this is our tax dollars at work."

Subsisting on a roughly $20,000 annual budget, the Moland House has adapted by bringing in school groups, Boy Scouts, and archaeologists who have dug up items on the site - such as the first minted American cent and military belt buckles.

It's a model for surviving in an era when other landmarks are put up for sale and the competition for attention, and visitors, is fierce.

"Americans are getting their history increasingly online, and there is less of an impulse to actually go to a site," said Michael Birkner, a history professor at Gettysburg College and president of the Pennsylvania Historical Association. He noted that even Colonial Williamsburg has struggled "because fewer people are going."

Other sites that have faced challenges or even extinction include New Mexico's Fort Bayard, an 19th-century outpost once guarded by Buffalo Soldiers. The state put it up for sale last year.

Funding cuts in Pennsylvania temporarily closed Washington Crossing Historic Park in Bucks County in 2009, until a friends group stepped in to help keep the grounds open to the public.

But money isn't the only challenge.

"There don't seem to be any younger folks donating any of their time," said Mullen's wife, Joanne, the chairwoman for the Moland House reenactment. "The guys who do the landscaping are in their 70s and 80s."

The Mullens are retired Central Bucks teachers - he taught economics and history and she educated elementary school students. They live just a few hundred yards from the Moland House in the village of Hartsville.

Dave Mullen was first drawn into the community's efforts to restore the Moland House in the 1990s through his work on the township's historical commission, which no longer exists for lack of members.

"This place is a shrine," he said. "Washington and 11,000 patriots and their families were here and preparing to try to defend the capital city from a British attack."

The property was owned in the mid-1700s by the English-born lawyer John Moland. In August 1777, his widow lived there when Washington made it his temporary headquarters and troops pitched tents in the surrounding countryside.

The general had stopped to await word regarding the whereabouts of a large enemy fleet sailing along the Atlantic Coast. Washington spent most of that time working: reviewing his troops, writing letters, ordering provisions, and holding a council of war in the house with his generals.

About 650 people are expected to attend the reenactment, which will include mock skirmishes.

John Godzieba, a Langhorne resident and Bristol Township police lieutenant, will play the role of a lieutenant in the Pennsylvania Fifth Regiment.

"For me, it's a hobby," said Godzieba, who also poses as Washington in the yearly Delaware River crossing reenactment. "Some people play golf. Some people spend their time down the Shore. We get in the back door of a lot of historic places that a lot of the general public doesn't get to see."

Since Revolutionary times, ownership of the Moland House has passed more than a dozen times. In the mid-1990s, Warwick Township condemned it and the historical society raised more than $1 million to restore it.

That money wouldn't be around today. The federal Save America's Treasures program that gave Moland a $175,000 grant was defunded by the Obama administration in 2010. And the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, which donated more than $100,000, has seen its budget chopped nearly in half since 2008.

The Moland House wouldn't qualify for state funding as a historical site because its budget is less than $100,000 and it has no full-time employees.

But its ability to stay open - and draw visitors - proves that it's not all "doom and gloom" for smaller historical sites, said Birkner.

"The only way these sites survive," he said, "is with the local groups who say, we're going to keep them going - whatever it takes."

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