Searching for Margaret Corbin

Now this is a lede:

Revolutionary War hero Margaret “Captain Molly” Corbin was long thought to be buried beneath her granite monument at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. The Daughters of the American Revolution moved her remains there in 1926 from an unmarked grave nearby. But it’s now clear they removed the wrong remains.

That’s from Michael Hill’s dispatch for the Associated Press.

Corbin is known from decisions by the Pennsylvania government and the Continental Congress in June 1779 to provide her with financial support. The paperwork surrounding that grant describes her as:

Margaret Corbin, who was wounded and disabled in the attack on Fort Washington whilst she heroically filled the post of her husband who was killed by her side serving a piece of artillery

Because of her wound, a 1780 report said, she was “deprived of the use of one arm.” Which for me raises questions about the statements that she worked as an army nurse until 1783. The original Congress documents don’t mention such service.

To confuse matters further, nineteenth-century authors amalgamated Corbin’s story with the legend of “Molly Pitcher,” though that tall tale grew from the Battle of Monmouth in 1778, two years after Corbin lost her husband and the use of her arm.

Corbin retired to the vicinity of West Point. In 1786 and 1787 Maj. George Fleming, in command at that army outpost, reported to Secretary of War Henry Knox about arranging for locals to board “Captain Molly” and supplying her with clothing. “Molly is such a disagreeable object to take care of,” the major said.

But sentiment and nostalgia for the Revolutionary generation won out, and by the mid-1800s Margaret “Captain Molly” Corbin was being recalled as a hero, with a growing set of anecdotal legends. In the first wave of American feminism authors lionized her as the first woman to receive a U.S. military pension.

Back to the A.P. dispatch:

Corbin died in 1800 at the age of 48 and was buried in a modest grave, likely near West Point. By the time the DAR decided to honor Corbin with a reburial in 1926, any marker on the 126-year-old grave was gone.

Relying in part on passed-down information from locals, the DAR pinpointed Corbin's grave a few miles south of West Point near a cedar stump on the old riverside estate of banker J. P. Morgan. The disinterred remains were placed in a silk-lined casket and driven by hearse to the storied cemetery in West Point and a new monument depicting Corbin beside her cannon.

End of story. Until October 2016.

Excavators working near the monument accidentally disturbed the grave, starting a chain of events that led to high-tech tests on the exhumed remains. Tests showed the skeletal remains belonged to a male, probably one who lived in the 19th century.

The monument was rededicated this spring, but it’s now more symbolic of women’s contributions to the U.S. of A. than an actual grave marker.

The Original Molly Pitcher

As quoted yesterday, two publications from 1835—one in English and one in German—appear to be the first print appearances of the name “Molly Pitcher” in stories about a female artillerist at the Battle of Monmouth.

But that name had already appeared in print attached to a completely different person: a fortune-teller active in Lynn in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

An article about “Witchcraft” in the October 1825 issue of the Boston Monthly Magazine, edited by Samuel L. Knapp, mentioned “Moll Pitcher, of Lynn,” and stated: “she was so well known to most persons, that their recollections will be better than any description.” Pitcher was such a celebrity, at least locally, that she needed no introduction.

In 1829 Bernard Whitman published A Lecture on Popular Superstitions in Boston. He wrote:

Not many years ago, a man was suddenly missing from a certain town in this commonwealth. The church immediately sent one of her members to consult the far famed fortune telling Molly Pitcher. After making the necessary inquiries, she intimated that the absent person had been murdered by a family of negroes, and his body sunk in the deep waters behind their dwelling. Upon this evidence, the accused were forthwith imprisoned, and the pond raked in vain from shore to shore. A few days previous to the trial, the murdered man returned to his friends safe and sound; thus giving the naughty skeptics occasion to say, that the fortune teller, instead of receiving from the devil information of distant and future events, had actually played the very devil with the superstitious church.

I have no clue about the accuracy of that story, which Whitman told with a frustratingly low number of specifics that can be tracked down.

In that same year, a more complimentary description of Pitcher appeared in the first edition of Alonzo Lewis’s History of Lynn:

The celebrated Mary Pitcher, a professed fortune teller, died on the ninth of April, 1813, at the age of 75 years. Her grandfather, John Diamond, lived at Marblehead, and was for many years celebrated for the exercise of the same pretensions. She was married to Robert Pitcher of Lynn, in 1760, and had several children.

This person has been more celebrated than any individual of her class in modern times. Not only was her name known in most towns throughout the United States, but probably there is not a port in Europe, visited by American ships, that has not heard of the skill of “Moll Pitcher.” Many persons came from places far remote, to consult with her on affairs of love or loss of property, or to obtain her surmises respecting the vicissitudes of their future fortune. Every youth who was not assured of the reciprocal affection of his fair one, and every maid who was desirous of anticipating the hour of her highest felicity, repaired at evening to the humble dwelling of Molly Pitcher, which stood on what was then a lonely road, near the foot of High Rock, with a single habitation nearly opposite, at the gate of which stood two bones of the great whale, which the waves of ocean, in the liberality of their power, had cast upon the beach.

To that place also were seen repairing sailors from the neighboring commercial towns, who were desirous of ascertaining the probable success of their future voyages. Many a reputable merchant too, of whose treasures on the faithless waves, the courier of intelligence had not brought the expected information, and being fearful of betraying the nature of his business by inquiring directly for “Moll Pitcher,” has raised a smile by asking in what part of the town he should find the bones of the great whale.

Her skill was principally exercised for the discovery of things lost, either material objects which had been mislaid or purloined, or the affections of some disconsolate fair one, which had taken the advantage of some favorable opportunity to elope. Her power of evil, if she possessed any, was never exerted, unless to punish such delinquents as refused to pay her for the knowledge which she pretended to impart. Some instances have been related, in which she has evinced an unusual degree of discernment; while in others her assertions have had no relation to facts, but appear to have been the result of mere guess work and presumption.

Her only ostensible means of obtaining secret knowledge, was the simple use of tea-grounds poured into a cup; and as the grains were disposed in a peculiar manner, or assumed a particular form, so she judged of the things to which she fancied a resemblance. She also availed herself of every ordinary mode of information, particularly by causing one of her domestics to talk with her visitors, to elicit the nature of their business, while she remained in an adjoining room, pretending to be absent. These arts, added to her natural shrewdness, and readiness to seize the slightest hint which might assist her in her surmises, appear to have constituted the whole amount of her power.

Her sagacity bore no proportion to the infatuation of those who trusted to it. She seems even to have admitted this, especially in one instance, when some gentlemen offered her a large sum, if she would inform them what ticket would draw the highest prize in a certain lottery. “Do you think,” said she, “if I knew, I should not buy it myself?”

Whatever may have been the witchcraft recognised in the Hebrew law, whether an actual communication with evil spirits, or the practice of deception by the means of false pretensions, an impartial investigation of the facts respecting “Moll Pitcher,” justify the conclusion, that her skill had no other foundation, than the practice of uncommon arts, assisted by an unusual degree of shrewdness and discernment.

In the next decade other authors appropriated Mary Pitcher for literary creations. In 1832 John Greenleaf Whittier published a poem, Moll Pitcher, which described her as stereotypical old witch. (The image above comes from a copy of that book owned by the University of Texas; in it someone has drawn several pictures of Pitcher talking back to Whittier.)

Two years later Samuel G. Goodrich’s Token and Atlantic Souvenir included a fictional story called “The Modern Job” with Pitcher as a character: “Moll Pitcher, or, as she is still called in the neighborhood where she resided, Molly Pitcher, was no ordinary woman. . . . In short, poor Molly, by degrees, was made to be a fortune-teller, and a diviner, in spite of herself.”

Thus, when American authors referred to the Monmouth artillerist as “Molly Pitcher” in 1835, they were echoing a name already well known among American sailors and New Englanders in general. Was that echo some kind of inside joke or allusion lost on us? Or had Revolutionary soldiers nicknamed the artillerist after the fortune-teller from Lynn, and why?

Again, Ray Raphael already noted this curious concatenation of Molly Pitchers in his book Founding Myths and in this Journal of the American Revolution article. Because Pitcher lived in Revolutionary New England, I’m going to dig a little deeper into her curious career.

TOMORROW: Moll Pitcher in the flesh.

The Legend of Molly Pitcher—A New Source

Since I was on a Battle of Monmouth kick, I’ll jump to one of the most enduring American legends to come out of that fight: Molly Pitcher.

As Ray Raphael wrote in Founding Myths and this article for the Journal of the American Revolution, there’s solid evidence of a woman helping her husband in the Continental artillery at that battle. In his memoir, first published in 1830, army veteran Joseph Plumb Martin wrote:

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 continued her occupation.

There’s also contemporaneous documentation of the state of Pennsylvania awarding a pension to Margaret Corbin, who took her husband’s place at a cannon during the defense of Fort Washington in 1776.

But the specific legendary figure we’ve come to know as Molly Pitcher first showed up in the second volume of Freeman Hunt’s 1830 collection American Anecdotes:

Before the two armies, American and English, had begun the general action of Monmouth, two of the advanced batteries commenced a very severe fire against each other. As the warmth was excessive, the wife of a cannonier constantly ran to bring him water from a neighbouring spring. At the moment when she started from the spring, to pass to the post of her husband, she saw him fall, and hastened to assist him; but he was dead. At the same moment she heard an officer order the cannon to be removed from its place, complaining he could not fill his post by as brave a man as had been killed. ‘No,’ said the intrepid Molly, fixing her eyes upon the officer, ‘the cannon shall not be removed for the want of some one to serve it; since my brave husband is no more, I will use my utmost exertions to avenge his death.’ The activity and courage with which she performed the office of cannonier during the action, attracted the attention of all who witnessed it, finally of Gen. Washington himself, who afterwards gave her the rank of Lieutenant, and granted her half pay during life. She wore an epaulette, and every body called her Captain Molly.

Five years later the story was in print again, in two sources, one of which I don’t think has been discussed before. A Popular Cyclopedia of History, an oft-reprinted reference book compiled by Francis Durivage, stated:

In the beginning of this battle [of Monmouth], one Molly Pitcher was occupied in carrying water from a spring to a battery, where her husband employed in loading and firing a cannon. He was shot dead at last, and she saw him fall. An officer rode up, and ordered off the cannon. “It can be of no use, now,” said he. but Molly stepped up, offered her services, and took her husband’s place, to the astonishment of the army. She fought well, and half pay for life was given her by Congress. She wore an epaulette, and was called Captain Molly, ever after.

And here’s a source I don’t think anyone has spotted before, also from 1835: Allgemeine Beschreibung der Welt [General Description of the World] published in Philadelphia. This book was credited to E. L. Walz with editing by Heinrich Diezel of Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. It was printed in old Gothic type, and I’ve never studied German. I’m therefore at the mercy of Google’s O.C.R. transcription and translation services, but this is what I think that book says:

In Monmouth County siel im Revolutionskriege eine Geschichte vor, welche noch immer häufig in N. I. erzählt wird: Die Amerikaner unter Washington, und die Engländer unter Henry Clinton, schlugen sich hier wasser herum. Es war an diesem Tage heiß und schwühl. Mitten in der Schlacht sah man eine Frau, Molly Pitcher, die einigen Artilleristen Wasser zutrug, unter denen auch ihr Mann sich befand. Von einer Kanonenkugel getroffen, stürzte er leblos nieder. Molly that nun, was 1000 andere Weiber nicht gethan haben würden. Statt zu weinen, stellte sie sich an die Stelle des Gefallenen und versah mit wahrem Heldenmuthe seine Dienste. Sie kam glücklich davon. Von dieser Zeit an behielt sie bis zu ihrem Tode den Namen: Major Molly.

[From Monmouth County in the revolutionary war fell a story which is still frequently told in N.J.​​: The Americans with Washington, and the English under Henry Clinton, this also reflected around water. It was hot and schwühl on this day. In the midst of the battle some artillerymen saw one woman, Molly Pitcher, that was happening water in which her ​​husband was. From a cannonball hit, he fell down lifeless. Molly now did what 1000 other women would not have done. Instead of crying, she stood in the place of the dead man and adorned with true heroism his services. She got off lucky. From that time on she kept until her death the name: Major Molly.]

It’s notable that the story penetrated the German-American community so early. That might lend credence to the interpretation that the real Molly Pitcher was Mary (Ludwig) Hays, the daughter of German immigrants to Philadelphia. On the other hand, Mary Hays settled in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, after the war, and lived until 1832, a local character who also received a state pension. So it’s a little surprising that this book’s source for the story seems to come from New Jersey rather than two counties away.

Clearly this anecdote grew in the telling. Mary Hays was supposedly called “Sergeant Molly” after the battle and later in life. In these early sources the corresponding detail became “the rank of Lieutenant” and “Captain Molly,” then “Major Molly.” There’s no documentation to support the claims that this woman received such a rank or a pension from “Gen. Washington himself” or the Congress. But clearly by the 1830s Americans of many sorts were telling the story of Molly Pitcher.

TOMORROW: But there already was a famous Molly Pitcher.