Life often calls on us to be heroes, sometimes in small ways, sometimes in grand ways. A hero is a person admired for courage, nobility, exploits, qualities, or achievements and regarded as an ideal or model. America seems to be good at making heroes when we need them. Here are some heroic women of our Revolutionary War (1775-1783) you may not have heard about. They all contributed to this great experiment we call American Democracy.
Like Paul Revere, Sybil Ludington rode horseback in the dark of night. On April 26, 1777, at the age of 16, she rode 40 miles through a rainstorm to find her father, a colonel in the New York militia, and warn him that the British planned an attack on Danbury, Connecticut. Unlike Revere two years earlier, she was not captured and completed her mission. Although the British were successful in their attack, her warning gave the Americans time to regroup and finally drive the Redcoats back to Long Island Sound.
Margaret Cochran Corbin became a hero at the Battle of Fort Washington in northern Manhattan on November 16, 1776. As many wives did, she followed her husband, John, while he served in the army. She cooked and washed for him and helped tend the wounded. Additionally, she carried water to soldiers in battle. She may have been the first person to carry the nickname “Molly Pitcher.”
The battle shaped up with 2,800 Americans facing 8,000 Hessians (mercenary soldiers from six German territories in the Holy Roman Empire. John Corbin and another soldier manned one of two cannons at the fort. When they were killed, Margaret took their place. Although she was not trained to the work, she had seen it so often that she was able to do it well. Seriously wounded at her post, she was taken prisoner by the British when the fort fell. She was paroled because of her wounds. Margaret was permanently disabled and became the first woman in America to receive a military pension.
A number of other women disguised themselves as men, fought in the Revolution, and received pensions for their service. This isn’t as strange as it sounds. Soldiers slept in their clothes and rarely bathed. The gender of female combatants was discovered only when they were wounded or killed. I urge you to explore the contributions of Mary Ludwig Hayes, Deborah Sampson, Anna Maria Lane, and other women, disguised as men, who fought against the British.
The creation of the American flag is one of the classic stories of the founding of the United States. Some historians give credit to Francis Hopkinson, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence as a delegate from New Jersey; but the story of Betsy Ross (1752-1836) seems to have captured the imaginations of more Americans. And although there is scant historical proof of the specifics of the story, there is agreement about the course of Betsy’s life.
She was born Elizabeth Griscom, the eighth of 17 children, on January 1, 1752. She was a fourth-generation American, raised as a Quaker and apprenticed to an upholsterer. At 21, she eloped with John Ross, a fellow apprentice. Betsy and John opened an upholstery shop in Philadelphia, where they did general sewing for the home.
These were times of political ferment. When the Revolutionary War flared up in 1775, John Ross joined a militia. He died in January 1776, when a cache of gunpowder he was guarding on the waterfront exploded. After two years of marriage, Betsy was a childless war widow struggling to keep her upholstery business alive.
As the story goes, in late May, 1776, a committee of the Continental Congress composed of George Washington, Robert Morris, and George Ross, her late husband’s uncle, came to Betsy and asked her to make a flag following a sketch that Washington had drawn. Betsy suggested alterations to the design, in particular changing the six-pointed stars to five-pointed since she could produce them with one snip of her scissors. The committee was impressed with Betsy’s demonstration, and she created the first American flag shortly before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. She continued to make American flags for another 50 years as part of her business.
Married and widowed twice more, Betsy Ross bore seven daughters. She retired in 1827, turning the business over to family and nine years later died at the age of 84.
In my next column, I’ll chronicle the brave women who fought for abolition and suffrage and ran for the presidency of our United States.