Richard Doran

Every American kid learns about Molly Pitcher. At the Battle of Monmouth in 1778, she carried water to soldiers under fire, and when her husband collapsed at his cannon, she took his place and kept firing. Here's the problem. There's no single woman we can prove was Molly Pitcher. The name itself is the first clue. "Molly" was a common nickname for women named Mary, and was used loosely for working-class women generally. "Pitcher" points to the job. Women who traveled with the army, often soldiers' wives, sometimes carried water to the men during battle, both for drinking and for swabbing out hot cannon barrels between shots. Historians think "Molly Pitcher" may have started as a generic name soldiers shouted for any woman bringing water. Over time the legend grew into one heroine. The woman most often identified as Molly Pitcher is Mary Ludwig Hays of Pennsylvania, whose husband was an artilleryman at Monmouth. In 1822 Pennsylvania gave her a pension for services during the Revolution. But the record doesn't spell out what she did, and the specific Molly Pitcher stories about her mostly appeared decades after she died. Something real did happen at Monmouth, though. Pvt. Joseph Plumb Martin wrote in his memoir about seeing a woman helping her husband work a cannon during the battle. As she reached for a cartridge, a cannonball passed straight between her legs and tore away the bottom of her petticoat. She looked down, said it was lucky it didn't pass a little higher, and kept working. Martin didn't name her. And there's a woman whose story we can actually document: Margaret Corbin. At the Battle of Fort Washington in November 1776, her husband was killed at his cannon and she took over firing it until she was badly wounded. In 1779 Congress granted her a pension, making her the first woman to receive a pension from the United States for military service. She's buried at West Point. So was Molly Pitcher real? Probably not as one person. But the women behind the legend were.