A Battlefield Memento

Inside the folds of this wallet, Samuel Gerock kept papers from the Revolutionary War. Gerock made the wallet from the animal-skin drumhead of a drum carried by his regiment at the battles of Trenton and Princeton in 1776 and 1777. His ink inscriptions on the wallet describe its history. In 1818, Gerock brought the wallet containing his papers to the courthouse in New Bern, North Carolina, where he lived after the war. As a veteran of the Continental Army, Gerock was entitled to a pension from the federal government if he could prove his service. Living in a different state than the one he enlisted in, Gerock might have had trouble verifying his service claims. But with original wartime documents in hand, Gerock’s appeal succeeded. One of the judges wrote that Gerock “laid before me sundry papers, bearing the evident stamp of authenticity.” Gerock’s papers remained folded inside this wallet for generations until his descendants donated the papers and the wallet to the Museum of the American Revolution in 2023. 

Wallet
Made by Samuel Gerock
New Jersey or Maryland
ca. 1777
Animal Skin
Museum of the American Revolution, Gift of Nanette Reid Osborne and Dr. Robert Kent Reid, children of Virginia Gerock Reid