182 Singing Valleys 



"Give me as fine a meal as you can grind," Christopher Lud- 

 wick told the millers. 'Til bake bread with that corn that the 

 men won't know from wheat; except that they'll get more 

 fighting strength out of it." 



And then he watched that the millers took no toll of the 

 army's grain. "Every kernel in those sacks has got to go to feed 

 a soldier. An army can't fight without food. The farmers have 

 got to raise the corn, you millers have got to grind it, I and 

 my men will make it into bread. That's the way the colonies 

 will win. It's the only way." 



The city of Philadelphia remembers Christopher Ludwick 

 for what he did for his fellow townsmen during the yellow 

 fever epidemic fifteen years after the war; and for his bequest 

 to the poor children of the city. The army remembers him 

 for his cleverness in going as a spy to the Hessian camps. He 

 peddled his famous gingerbread to the soldiers, and brought 

 back news. Moreover, he persuaded more than one Hessian to 

 desert his regiment and accept the Continental Congress's 

 offer of fifty acres of good farm land and American citizenship. 



"Better be an American farmer, and free," the gingerbread 

 peddler counseled, "than to lose your lives fighting for a cause 

 that is not yours; and for a king you never saw." 



But not the least of the little baker's services to his chosen 

 country was his work before the ovens and at the grist mills. 

 He had a jealous concern for every bushel of corn the army 

 bought. 



"Give me the corn, sir," he said to Washington, "and your 

 troops will be fed. Not a toddick of it but goes into a loaf. As 

 long as there's a farmer left to plant corn we'll keep the army 

 in the field." 



There are mills in this country which "Baker-General" Lud- 

 wick may well have visited, and which are still grinding corn. 

 One, not far from Valley Forge, ran until a very few years 

 ago. A sign in front of the old stone building tells that it 

 served the Continental Army. 



