Sketch of Revolutionary NC brigade discovered hanging on NY wall

The back story of how the 249-year-old sketch was discovered could be as interesting as the piece itself.

The rectangular drawing of a revolutionary war
brigade out of North Carolina was created in Pennsylvania.

Looking at it now, the sketch looks significant
sitting behind museum glass. But just three years ago, it was considered a
novel antique store find, hanging on a collector’s wall.

Historian Matthew Skic said he was in collector, Judith Hernstadt’s New York home when she happened to show him a sketch she’d picked up at an antique store in the 1970s.

“I look on the wall, she points it out, and my jaw is on the floor with what I was seeing, and this small sketch on paper. The ink and the paper struck me as this looks like it’s from the 18th century, from the 1700s. I was looking at the scene, seeing soldiers, a wagon, horses, and it looked like a military scene, and an army on the move,” Skic said.

Skic oversees collections at the Museum of the
American Revolution and immediately noticed the figure in a fringed hunting
shirt, commonly worn by soldiers in George Washington’s Army. He got permission to remove the framed sketch from the wall and saw a faint inscription.

“It said, ‘An exact representation of a wagon belonging to
the North Carolina brigade of Continental troops, which passed through Phila,’ and then the mat had cut off the rest of the inscription,” he recalled.

What he had discovered was one of only a dozen known eye-witness accounts of George Washington’s Army. An eye-witness account is considered something captured in the moment, not commissioned or created after an event.

“We didn’t have a camera. There’s no record of what, what they looked like, action scenes,” said Ansley Herring Wegner, who runs the state’s historical
research and publications.

She spoke to the rarity of finding an eye-witness account of Washington’s troops.

“Well, George Washington had just recently said, ‘Do not
allow camp followers on the carts, because it really slows everything down. It gums up the works.’ Well, North Carolina, ‘You can’t tell us what to do,’ so they’re there on the cart, and there’s wounded soldiers on the back,” Herring Wegner said.

Immediately after the discovery, Skic went to work. He found headlines from August 1777 when
the brigade marched through Philadelphia and traced the route they took. Then, he
researched skilled artists in town at the time and landed on Pierre Eugene du
Simitiere.

“So I studied his handwriting among his papers at the
Library Company in Philadelphia, and [found it] matches his handwriting,” he said.

Whether many Americans know it or not, we are familiar with du Simitiere’s work. It was his idea in an application to design the U.S. Seal that gave us our national motto.

“His design was ultimately rejected, but one of the
elements of his design for that seal, which he submitted in 1776 was the motto, e pluribus unum, which we still use today. That’s the motto of the United
States; Out of many, one.

The sketch was on display at the Capitol for
one day. However, the conditions were not favorable for a long-term stay. Visitors can see it when it goes to the North Carolina Museum of Art from
May 20 to Aug. 1.

The original owner, Judith Hernstadt, has donated the sketch to the Museum of the American Revolution. The presentation of the sketch at the Capitol building is part of North Carolina’s celebration of America’s 250th. Learn more about the sketch at the state’s website for the country’s milestone.