During his 52 years overseeing the estate, he doubled the facility's acreage, improved the grounds, and added many historic artifacts to the collections there.

[4] After graduating from college, Dodge worked in the Wall Street banking house of Jay Cooke & company, until that firm collapsed during the Panic of 1873.

The non-resident Hollingsworth's means of addressing the revenue drop alienated first the staff (which also had to deal with vandalism and natural deterioration of the wet historic site) and then the MVLA regents.

Using this knowledge, Dodge oversaw the restoration of the site and put in place a number of improvements that Washington had planned but never implemented.

Dodge and then-assistant superintendent Charles Wall, who had been hired in 1929, rotated turns sleeping as guards in the manor house.

The knife was said to have played a role at Valley Forge in convincing the general to continue as leader of the Continental Army in one of its darkest days.