Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley...aka Molly Pitcher

I wonder if there's any Molly Pitcher's out there now. I think there's at least a few here on this site.

This is a great story for Independence Day.

In 1775, the Revolutionary War began, and Hays enlisted in May, 1777, in the Colonial Army in Briston, Bucks County. Mary Ludwig Hays followed her husband to war, a custom in the British Army and, to some extent, among the American troops. Following her husband’s regiment, she nursed the sick and assisted in cooking and washing. On June 28, 1778, in Freehold, New Jersey, during the Battle of Monmouth, Mary Ludwig Hays earned the nickname “Molly Pitcher,” becoming one of the most popular female images of the Revolutionary War. On that day, during the Battle of Monmouth, Molly Pitcher performed an act of unusual heroism, an act that would go down in history as legendary. That day in Freehold, New Jersey, it was told that Mary trudged back and forth from a nearby spring bringing water to the soldiers on that hot and smoky battlefield. Welcoming the sight of the sparkling water, the weary soldiers nicknamed her “Molly Pitcher.” According to some accounts, on one of her trips from the spring, Molly Pitcher, as she was always called thereafter, saw her husband collapsing next to his cannon, unable to fight. Molly dropped her pitcher and took over his position, and she was seen firing the cannon throughout the dreadful battle until victory was achieved. Her act of heroism on that day earned her a sergeant’s commission, given by General Greene, some even say by George Washington himself. An old Revolutionary rhyme tells the story:

Moll Pitcher she stood by her gun
And rammed the charges home, sir;
And thus on Monmouth bloody field
A sergeant did become, sir.


[link to pabook.libraries.psu.edu]