These women served as nurses, laundresses, seamstresses or cooks. For this work they were compensated with rations and sometimes payment. The Valley Forge Encampment included hundreds of these year-round camp followers. During the winter encampments the officers’ wives would often join their husbands it an effort to relieve the burdens of war. In addition to women, the camp included free and enslaved African Americans, some of whom were runaways hoping for freedom. They served side by side in the Continental Army or as civilian servants, medical orderlies, musicians, waiters, waggoneers and armorers.
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