George Washington's headquarters flag, a powder horn engraved with the message "Liberty or Death," and a punch bowl emblazoned with the Arms of Liberty are just some of the several thousand objects that will go on display when the Museum of the American Revolution opens next April in Philadelphia.

The private, not-for-profit museum will open a few blocks from Independence Hall on the corner of Third and Chestnut Streets. It derives much of its collection from artifacts assembled over the past century by the Valley Forge Society, founded in 1909 by Reverend W. Herbert Burk. Burk's first major acquisition was George Washington's headquarters tent (the "first Oval Office"), which will also be on display at the museum, along with Patrick Henry's law books, a cookie mold belonging to the Continental Army's Superintendent of Bakers, and even a timber from Concord, Massachusetts' North Bridge, where the first fighting of the Revolutionary War occurred.