Founding Myths (48 page)

  
8
.
  
In the paperback edition of my own
People's History of the American Revolution
(New York: HarperCollins, 2002), which states that Molly Pitcher is a fictive creation, her dramatic presence on the front cover, leading the men into battle, belies my quibbles inside.

  
9
.
  
Augusta Stevenson,
Molly Pitcher: Young Patriot
(New York: Macmillan, 1986; originally published in 1960), 184–191.

10
.
  
The best known Revolutionary soldier in the years following the war, before the evolution of “Molly Pitcher,” was in fact Deborah Sampson, who toured several states in 1802–1803, two decades after the war ended, as “The Celebrated Mrs. Gannett (Late Deborah Sampson), the American Heroine,” recounting her story and performing “the manual exercise” for eager audiences. (Young,
Masquerade
, 167–224.)

11
.
  
Edward Hagaman Hall,
Margaret Corbin: Heroine of the Battle of Fort Washington, 16 November 1776
(New York: American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, 1932), 14–15.

12
.
  
The “Waste Book for the Quartermaster Stores” and the “Letter Books of Captain William Price, Commissary of Ordinance and Military Stores,” in the West Point library. The numerous tents she received were possibly turned into clothing. Captain Molly was unable to care for herself, and money for her support was paid directly to her caregiver. (Hall,
Margaret Corbin
, 24–30.)

13
.
  
Benson J. Lossing,
Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1852), 2: 164.

14
.
  
Here is Waldo's full account, as reported by William Stryker well over a century later: “One of the camp women I must give a little praise to. Her gallant, whom she attended in battle, being shot down, she immediately took up his gun and cartridges and like a Spartan heroine fought with astonishing bravery, discharging the piece with as much regularity as any soldier present. This a wounded officer, whom I dressed, told me he did see himself, she being in his platoon, and assured me I might depend on its truth.” (William S. Stryker,
The Battle of Monmouth
[Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1927], 189. Stryker's book was completed in 1899, although not published then.) Whether the “gun” in question was a cannon or a musket is not absolutely clear; both could be called a “piece,” both were discharged by igniting cartridges, and both were fired at intervals that could be regular or irregular.

15
.
  
This is worrisome. The revised 1862 edition of Dr. James Thacher's
Military Journal of the American Revolution
, originally published decades earlier, contained some brandnew material—an account of Molly Pitcher—even though Thacher himself had died in 1844. Without further evidence, we cannot say whether Waldo's statement was contemporary to the time or whether it had been doctored to conform to a legend that emerged later, as Thacher's was.

16
.
  
Here is Martin's account: “One little incident happened, during the heat of the cannonade, which I was eye-witness to, and which I think would be unpardonable not to mention. A woman whose husband belonged to the Artillery, and who was then attached to a piece in the engagement, attended with her husband at the piece the whole time; while in the act of reaching a cartridge and having one of her feet as far before the other as she could step, a cannon shot from the enemy passed directly between her legs without doing any other damage than carrying away all the lower part of her petticoat,—looking at it with apparent unconcern, she observed, that it was lucky it did not pass a little higher, for in that case it might have carried away something else, and ended her and her
occupation.” (Joseph Plumb Martin,
A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier
[New York: Signet, 2001; originally published in 1830], 115. In other reprints, Martin ends this piece not with “ended her and her occupation” but “continued her occupation.”) Since Martin showed no surprise at a woman firing a cannon, this might well have been commonplace. He likely told the story for its ribald petticoat punch line.

17
.
  
Howard H. Peckham,
The Toll of Independence: Engagements & Battle Casualties of the American Revolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 52.

18
.
  
John Laffin,
Women in Battle
(London and New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1967), 38–43.

19
.
  
Freeman Hunt,
American Anecdotes: Original and Select
(Boston: Putnam and Hunt, 1830), 2: 275.

20
.
  
Emily Lewis Butterfield, “Lie There My Darling, While I Avenge Ye,” in
Remembering the Revolution: Memory, History and Nation Making from Independence to the Civil War
, Michael McDonnell, Clare Corbould, Frances M. Clarke, and W. Fitzhugh Brundage, eds. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013), 201, 205. Butterfield cites two papers, “A Tale of '76,”
Baltimore Gazette and Daily Advertiser
, July 9, 1830, and “A Tale of '76,”
Charleston City Gazette
, July 15, 1830, and implies there were others. Here is the embellished 1837 piece: “MOLLY PITCHER— . . . At the commencement of the battle of Monmouth this intrepid woman contributed her aid by constantly carrying water from a spring to the battery where her husband was employed, as a cannonier, in loading and firing a gun. At length he was shot dead in her presence, just as she was leaving the spring; whereupon she flew to the spot—found her husband lifeless, and, at the moment, heard an officer, who rode up, order off the gun “for want of a man sufficiently dauntless to supply his place.” Indignant at this order, and stung by the remark, she promptly opposed it—demanded the post of her slain husband to avenge his death—flew to the gun, and to the admiration and astonishment of all who saw her, assumed and ably discharged the duties of the thus vacated post of cannonier, to the end of the battle! For this sterling demonstration of genuine WHIG spirit, Washington gave her a lieutenant's commission upon the spot, which Congress afterwards ratified. And granted her a sword, and an epaulette, and half pay, as a lieutenant, for life! She wore the epaulette, received the pay, and was called ‘Captain Molly!' ever afterwards.” (Quoted in Marc Mappen,
There's More to New Jersey than the Sopranos
[Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009], 31.)

21
.
  
George Washington Parke Custis,
Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington
(New York: Derby & Jackson, 1860), 225. Custis began publishing his “recollections” of Washington serially in the 1820s. In 1840 these were gathered in the
National Intelligencer
, and in 1859, after his death, they appeared in book form. This is from the book edition, quoted in D.W. Thompson and Merri Lou Schaumann, “Goodbye, Molly Pitcher,”
Cumberland County History 6
(1989), 11. It appeared in the
National Intelligencer
, February 22, 1840, and possibly in the
United States Gazette
in the late 1820s. Custis included a prologue to the story that has since been dropped: “At one of the guns of Proctor's battery, six men had been killed or wounded. It was deemed an unlucky gun and murmurs arose that it should be drawn back and abandoned.” This was the cannon that Captain Molly would fire. After she had saved the day, Custis wrote, “the doomed
gun was no longer deemed unlucky.” Thompson and Schaumann (“Goodbye, Molly Pitcher,” 11–12) argue that this prologue is improbable on two counts: the lion's share of casualties among the artillery at Monmouth would have occurred at this one location, and the Americans rarely abandoned any of their cannons.

22
.
  
Pension application for Rebecca Clendenen, discussed and referenced in note 29.

23
.
  
Thompson and Schaumann, “Goodbye, Molly Pitcher,” 15–16; Butterfield, “Lie There My Darling,” 204.

24
.
  
For two different references, one from an oral tradition and the other printed in the
Pennsylvania Archives
, see Hall,
Margaret Corbin
, 34–35. A poem cited in 1905 uses “Moll” and “Molly” interchangeably (Carol Klaver, “An Introduction into the Legend of Molly Pitcher,”
Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women and the Military
12 [1994]: 52).

25
.
  
Butterfield, “Lie There My Darling,” 206.

26
.
  
In his editorial notes to Custis's
Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington
(Philadelphia: J.W. Bradley, 1861), Lossing refused to call Captain Molly by the name that was assuming greater popularity by that time: Molly Pitcher. “Art and Romance have confounded her with another character, Moll Pitcher,” he stated (225–26). As recently as 1978, Michael Kammen, in his detailed study of how the Revolution was portrayed through American history, confused the protagonist of the play with the heroine of Monmouth (Michael Kammen,
A Season of Youth: The American Revolution and the Historical Imagination
[New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978], 111, 121, 132).

27
.
  
“Searching for Molly Pitcher Exhibit, 2001,” Monmouth County Archives Internet site, accessed February 3, 2004;
www.visitmonmouth.com/archives/
.

28
.
  
Butterfield, “Lie There My Darling,” 210.

29
.
  
In this manner, the Molly Pitcher legend parallels that of Betsy Ross: “There is really no point in arguing over who made the
first
flag because there wasn't one. The stars and stripes that we know today had multiple parents and dozens of siblings.” (Ulrich, “How Betsy Ross Became Famous,”
www.common-place.org/vol-08/no-01/ulrich/
.) People's motives for attaching themselves to the legend do not have to include fame; mere proximity will sometimes yield rewards. When Rebecca Clendenin applied for a war widow's pension in 1840, she tried to prove that her deceased husband had actually served at Monmouth by telling the story of a woman who had taken her husband's place at a cannon. Clendenin offered her version of a known “anecdote” as collaborative evidence; it gave her case an assumed authenticity, and it continues to do so today. Her testimony is sometimes used to affirm the existence of a real Molly Pitcher, even though anybody in the 1830s or 1840, including her husband, could have told the same story on the basis of what he or she had heard or read by that time. (Butterfield, “Lie There My Darling,” 200.)

30
.
  
Thompson and Schaumann, “Goodbye, Molly Pitcher,” 22.

31
.
  
Ibid., 21. A second obituary, although less low-key, likewise failed to acknowledge Mrs. McCauley as “Molly Pitcher.”

32
.
  
Rev. George Swain,
Historical Discourse in Connection with the Presbyterian Church of Allentown and Vicinity, 1876
(Philadelphia: Kildare, 1877), 18;
Monmouth Inquirer
, March 26, 1876, in David George Martin,
A Molly Pitcher Sourcebook
(Hightstown, NJ:
Longstreet House, 2003), 38–40. Thanks to John Fabiano of the Allentown–Upper Free-hold Historical Society for these references.

33
.
  
We don't know very much about her life before and during the Revolutionary War; in fact, there is some argument over the identity of the husband whom she supposedly accompanied into battle. Some historians claim he was John Casper Hays, who allegedly married Mary Ludwig on July 24, 1769; others say the marriage record actually lists the husband's name as William. John Hays first enlisted in the army in 1775, then reenlisted in 1777 in the Seventh Pennsylvania Regiment, which fought in the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse the following year. William Hays, who enlisted as a gunner in the artillery in 1777, was also reported at Monmouth. For the John Casper Hays version, see John B. Landis, “Investigation into American Tradition of Woman Known as Molly Pitcher,”
Journal of American History
5 (1911): 83–94, and John B. Landis,
A Short History of Molly Pitcher, the Heroine of the Battle of Monmouth
(Cumberland County, PA: Comman Printers, 1905), 10–14. For the William Hays version, see Thompson and Schaumann, “Goodbye, Molly Pitcher,” 3–26. Thompson points to tax records for 1783, which show William and Mary Hays living with a three-year-old boy named John. Probate records confirm that young John was the son of William and Mary. If John Casper Hays lived in Carlisle after the war, he left no traces. In the revised
American National Biography
, published in 1999, John K. Alexander favors John over William, although he fails to explain John's mysterious disappearance after the war and the fact that subsequent records indicate that William was the father of Mary's son. It is certainly possible that Mary Hays was at Monmouth with her husband (whoever he might be), and it is conceivable, if she was with the army, that she helped the artillery team, but there is no written record for any of this.

                
After William Hays died in 1786, Mary Hays married John McCalla. (I render her surname as McCauley, perhaps the most common spelling, or Hays, her surname during the Revolution.) By 1810 John had either died or disappeared, and Mary, by then at least fifty-five years old, supported herself by whitewashing public buildings, cleaning, and laundering. (Thompson and Schaumann, “Goodbye, Molly Pitcher,” 18–20; and Landis,
Short History of Molly Pitcher
, 17–20.)