von Steuben, Baron, Memorial Site

Baron von Steuben Memorial Site in Remsen, Oneida County, marks the burial place of Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, the Prussian officer who trained Continental Army troops at Valley Forge. The site centers on a granite and limestone tomb, completed in 1872 and surrounded by an iron fence, Civil War era Parrott guns and stacked cannonballs. Nearby are a 1937 reconstructed log cabin, a boulder bearing a 1934 bronze plaque, eight 1930s state historic markers and rows of Norway spruces planted in 1932. The tomb sits within a five-acre wooded Sacred Grove that must remain forested under the terms of its deed. The property was listed for its role in German-American social history. German-Americans gathered here in the 1870s and again in the interwar years, when Steuben's unquestioned patriotism let them affirm loyalty after the suspicion of World War I. They worked with New York State to acquire the land, develop the park and build the cabin, and the site remained a place where being German was acceptable.