Harmony marks visit from George Washington
HARMONY — On Nov. 30, 1753, George Washington was setting up camp in the rolling hills of what would become Harmony borough.
By a happy coincidence, volunteers from Washington’s Trail installed an informational marker at the site Thursday, Nov. 30, commemorating his visit 270 years to the day.
“I didn’t even know it was that day,” said Martin O’Brien, founder of the trail, laughing.
“George Washington slept here,” the marker reads, planted just behind the 1809 Harmonist barn on Mercer Road. The marker rests along Washington’s Trail — a historic driving route through Western Pennsylvania, marking a 21-year-old Washington’s fateful military and diplomatic venture through the region.
O’Brien, now chair of Washington’s Trail, said he founded the organization to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Washington’s journey in 2003.
“We got some money and we started putting up the red, white and blue signs all through the trail,” he said. “Especially up around Moraine State Park, but they go from Butler County north to Waterford, (Erie County), to mark Washington’s trail.”
In addition to the iconic road signs marking the trail, O’Brien said the group began installing informational markers along it in 2020, beginning in Moraine State Park.
“We tried to put a little local history in it about Washington being in that vicinity,” he said.
The Harmony location represented the organization’s fifth marker, funded with part of a $5,000 American Corner “Preserving America” grant.
O’Brien said he hoped the new Harmony marker left visitors with “a little knowledge.”
“I hope they appreciate the fact that great things happened in Butler with Washington,” O’Brien said.
The new marker was made possible with the help of Harmony Museum and Historic Harmony, the borough’s dedicated historical society.
Historic Harmony president Rodney Gasch and vice president Gwen Lutz — also volunteers with Washington’s Trail — said the society got approval from the borough before installing the marker at their historic barn.
“Everybody’s very supportive of history here,” Gasch said. “People are happy to support our efforts and to talk about the history of Harmony.”
Gasch said the new marker — and Washington’s Trail as a whole — represented an “important part of Washington’s life.”
“Washington was just 21 years old, so like a college student, and he gets sent on this diplomatic mission to see whether there’s French troops and soldiers here, because Virginia and Great Britain had claimed this land” Gasch said. “This was really a formative thing for Washington.”
Following the trail to Fort Le Boeuf in present-day Waterford, Washington was tasked with delivering a letter demanding a French retreat from the British claim.
“And then he has to report back to the governor of the Virginia colony and say, ‘Yes, I did see the French here; I gave them your letter which said, “Please leave,”’ and they gave Washington a letter that essentially said to the British, ‘Stay out of New France,’” Gasch said with a laugh.
But it was 28 days after Washington’s rest in present-day Harmony that his story — and the story of the United States — was very nearly cut short, according to O’Brien.
Famously, a Native American guide — sympathetic to the French — shot at Washington and missed on Dec. 27 while his group was just in Connoquenessing Township.
“Had Washington been killed in Butler County, he would not have been there to hold the Constitution, the revolution and the first presidency of the country together,” O’Brien said. “We probably would not be a democratic republic.”
