BEAR CREEK TOWNSHIP -- More than 200 years after a prominent U.S. general camped out in Luzerne County during the American Revolution, his memory lives on with newly redone monuments.
Organizers will formally unveil new marble plates on the stone monuments at Monument Park along Laurel Run Road in Bear Creek Township.
The monuments stand on the site of Bullock's farm, where Major General John Sullivan and 3,500 revolutionary soldiers camped out as part of the Sullivan Expedition.
The stone monuments were moved to Monument Park from just down the road in 1979 but have stood in their current location for nearly 40 years without tablets on them explaining their significance. The bronze plates on them were stolen not once, but twice from 1929 to the late 1960's. Until Willard Kresge with the Bear Creek Buck Township Lions Club stepped in.
"I really wanted to see it finished before I leave this earth," Kresge explained. Kresge, a former township supervisor, convinced the current township supervisors to sign off on the $7,500 project to replace put new marble plaques on the monuments.
Kresge, a former township supervisor, convinced the current township supervisors to sign off on the $7,500 project to replace put new marble plaques on the monuments.
"It meant a lot," said Ella McCallin, who lives down the street from the monuments. She remembers the old bronze plates before they were stolen.
"It just makes people understand and realize what history was back in those days."
The monuments and their new marbles plaques will be formally dedicated Saturday at 10 a.m.