Margaret Corbin
Another probable source for the legend of "Molly Pitcher" is the true story of Margaret Corbin, which bears many similarities to the story of Mary Hays. Margaret Corbin was the wife of John Corbin of Philadelphia, also an artilleryman in the Continental army. On November 12, 1776, John Corbin was one of 2,800 American soldiers who defended Fort Washington in northern Manhattan from 9,000 attacking Hessian troops under British command. When John Corbin was killed, Margaret took his place at the cannon, and continued to fire it until she was seriously wounded in the arm. In 1779, Margaret Corbin was awarded an annual pension by the state of Pennsylvania for her heroism in battle. She was the first woman in the United States to receive a military pension. Her nickname was "Captain Molly."
Read more about this topic: Molly Pitcher
Famous quotes containing the words margaret and/or corbin:
“There’s Margaret and Marjorie and Dorothy and Nan,
A Daphne and a Mary who live in privacy;
One’s had her fill of lovers, another’s had but one,
Another boasts, “I pick and choose and have but two or three.”
If head and limb have beauty and the instep’s high and light
They can spread out what sail they please for all I have to say....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Women are to be lifted up to a physical equality with man by placing upon their shoulders equal burdens of labor, equal responsibilities of state-craft; they are to be brought down from their altruistic heights by being released from all obligations of purity, loyalty, self-sacrifice, and made free of the world of passion and self-indulgence, after the model set them by men of low and materialistic ideals.”
—Caroline Fairfield Corbin (b. c. 1835–?)