The first woman to receive a U.S. military pension manned her husband’s cannon after he was killed
When he fell, Margaret Corbin took up his position and fought on
Margaret Corbin fought to protect the island of Manhattan, but not from hipsters. From the British.
On November 16, 1776, Margaret accompanied her husband, John Corbin, into battle to defend Fort Washington, which was attacked by British redcoats and Hessian mercenaries. While he fired a cannon alongside 3,000 other troops, she busied herself replenishing supplies, and cleaning and loading various weapons. Then John was struck and killed in front of her.
Margaret immediately took up her fallen husband’s post. She gamely reloaded and began firing his cannon and, to the great surprise of nearby troops, fought with “distinguished bravery” until she herself was seriously wounded by three grape shots. Then she was taken as a prisoner of war.
She stepped up as “the first woman to take a soldier’s part” and, because of her valor at Fort Washington, became the first woman to receive a pension from the United States military.
She was born Margaret Cochran on November 12, 1751 in what is now Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Legend has it that at the age of five, her parents were the victims of a Native American raid; her father was killed, her mother taken captive. Margaret was raised by her maternal uncle. At the age of 21, she married John, a farmer from Virginia.
When he enlisted in the First Company of the Pennsylvania Artillery at the outset of the revolution, Margaret followed him. It was common for wives and families to join their soldier husbands at their outposts, working as laundresses, cooks, and sometimes in battle as nurses or general aids. These women were unofficially known as “camp followers” and, in many cases, were actually awarded rations by the military, which knew it could retain more soldiers if their wives could come along. Even so, camp life was exacting and women had to work hard to prove their worth.
After the British took Fort Washington, they loaded Margaret into a jolting wagon headed for Philadelphia. There she was treated but her wounds left her permanently without the use of her left arm.
Without work, Margaret struggled throughout the remainder of the war. In 1779, she caught a small but exclusive break: The Pennsylvania Supreme Council awarded her $30 in relief and appealed to the Congressional Board of War to review her case. On July 6, Congress voted to pay Margaret a soldier’s half-pension, which amounted to $50 per year, roughly $1,000 today, plus one “suit of clothes” or its equivalent value in money. Later, she was also permitted a soldier’s ration of whiskey. She was the first woman who fought in war to receive any such benefits.
Margaret was assigned to the newly created Corps of Invalids, a unit of wounded veterans who assisted military efforts. She moved to West Point for her duties until the Corps disbanded in April 1783.
Little evidence remains as to Margaret’s activities hereafter, though historians conjecture she remarried and stayed in the West Point area until about 1789. One eyewitness record remembered a stout, red-haired woman who townspeople called “Captain Molly,” Molly being a common nickname for Margaret at the time. Lore has it she was not of the best temper following the war. At one point, the Philadelphia Society of Women visited Margaret to ascertain her candidacy for a historical monument. However, according to the National Women’s History Museum, “they discovered that she was a rough woman who was poor and drank too much and decided to cancel the monument.” If true, it’s no wonder — she had seen battle, watched her husband die, and lived in poverty with a severe disability.
Many other women served and died in the Revolutionary War. Few fought in actual battle, and those who did often resorted to disguise. One Deborah Samson enlisted as “Robert Shurtleff” in May 1782 but was discharged the following year after her sex was revealed during medical treatment. A Creole woman named Sally St. Clair also enlisted as a man, but was only discovered after her death at the Battle of Savannah. By comparison, an estimated 400 women fought in men’s clothes during the American Civil War, some 80 years later.
Margaret Corbin died in 1800, and was reportedly buried under a crude marker in the highlands above the Hudson River, near West Point. In 1926, the Daughters of the American Revolution discovered Margaret’s records and set about finding, exhuming, and re-interring her remains with her fellow soldiers at West Point’s Old Cadet Chapel. Thereafter, a monument marked her grave. Manhattan erected its own bronze plaque near Fort Tyron Park, which honors Margaret as “the first American woman to take a soldier’s part in the War for Liberty.”
