Joseph Plumb Martin
Joseph Plumb Martin began the Revolutionary War as a 15-year-old private from Massachusetts and ended it as a 22-year-old private. In between, Martin shivered at Valley Forge, roasted at the Battle of Monmouth, shot at people he hoped he didn’t hit, and wept over the body of a friend bayoneted to death on the orders of Benjamin Franklin’s Loyalist son.Americans know all this because at the age of 70, Martin wrote a marvelous memoir he called Private Yankee Doodle (republished more recently as Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier, published by Signet Classics.) It’s a remarkable story of an ordinary soldier, but one blessed with a splendid sense of humor and the quiet courage and determination that exemplified what kept the Continental Army going.
Martin did nothing particularly heroic, except persevere through incredibly trying conditions and live to tell people what it was really like to fight in the Revolutionary War: Going day after day after day without adequate food, clothing, and shelter — and getting up to do it again. Come to think of it, that’s pretty heroic.
“Molly Pitcher”
The name “Molly Pitcher” became the iconic composite of numerous women who followed their husbands to war, performing tasks such as fetching water, washing clothes, and nursing the sick and wounded. Several of them were also known to have fought alongside, or in place of, their husbands.
©By Everett Historical/Shutterstock.comMary Ludwig Hays (aka Molly Pitcher) (right) at the Battle of Monmouth, 1778; engraving from Headley's 'Life of Washington,' 1858.
Joseph Plumb Martin recorded one such incident at the Battle of Monmouth, when a woman whose husband was wounded took his place, helping to load a cannon. At one point, Martin wrote, “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 (then) continued her occupation."
Martin didn’t name the woman, but she is most often identified as Mary Ludwig Hays. Impressed by her heroism, George Washington designated her a noncommissioned officer. Hays did not see action again, but was given a veteran’s pension by the state of Pennsylvania before she died in 1832.
James Forten
At the age of 14, Forten joined the crew of an American privateer that was soon captured by the British navy. Most U.S. prisoners were doomed to horrific confinement in stinking prison ships anchored in New York Harbor. But Forten faced a worse fate: He was black, and even though he had been born free in Philadelphia, the British made no distinctions: Most captured African Americans were sold as slaves to the West Indies.Forten, however, was lucky. He was befriended by the son of the British captain who had captured Forten’s ship and was offered the chance to go to England. But Forten refused to repudiate his American citizenship. So instead of slavery, he was sent to a prison ship. There, he spent seven months huddled with a thousand other prisoners in a belowdecks enclosure that was less than three feet high. He was lucky again, when he was released in a prisoner exchange, whereupon he walked 100 miles home to Philadelphia.
After the war, Forten became a sailmaker. His business prospered, and he became a leading figure in the pre-Civil War abolitionist movement. In 2001, Forten was included by scholar Molefi Kete Asante as one of the 100 greatest African Americans.
Daniel Morgan
Okay, Daniel Morgan wasn’t a private; he was a general. But there are at least 499 good reasons for remembering Daniel Morgan. He wore them on his back: While a member of the British Army (with his cousin, Daniel Boone) during the French and Indian War, Morgan was flogged for striking an officer. The 499-lash penalty was usually fatal, but Morgan escaped with scars and a lasting and understandable dislike of the British.Born in New Jersey in 1736, Morgan got his nickname “Old Wagoner” from driving supply trains. When the Revolutionary War began, he formed a unit of sharp-shooting frontiersman from Virginia and then marched them 600 miles in 21 days to Massachusetts without losing a man. “Morgan’s Rifles” proved to be an invaluable fighting group. Often outnumbered, they used guerilla tactics, like shooting the British army’s Indian guides first and then the officers. The British deemed it dishonorable; Morgan considered it effective.
Morgan rose to the rank of brigadier general and is recognized as one of the American army’s best tacticians. After the war, he led federal troops to put down a rebellion against the young U.S. government and served a term in Congress. He died in 1802. And okay, he isn’t completely unsung: There are statues of him in two different states and a county and national security school named after him.
Roger Sherman
You may not recognize this Founding Father’s name, but it’s the only one that appears on all four of what are considered America’s Great State Papers: The Continental Association (which enacted a pre-Revolution boycott of British goods); the Articles of Confederation; the Declaration of Independence (which Sherman helped draft); and the U.S. Constitution.Born in 1721, Sherman was a self-educated Connecticut lawyer and judge. He played key roles in working out the compromises that won approval for the Constitution and served in both houses of Congress before his death in 1793.
PS: A great-great-great grandson, Archibald Cox, would serve as a special federal prosecutor who helped bring down the presidency of Richard M. Nixon in 1973–74 — which probably would have been okay with Cox’s ancestor: Sherman once said that the presidency was "nothing more than an institution for carrying the will of the Legislature into effect.”
Nancy Hart
Nancy Hart was the wrong woman from whom to steal a turkey —or at least that’s how the story goes. Born Nancy Ann Morgan around 1735 and a cousin of Gen. Daniel Morgan, this Georgia frontier dweller was described as a 6-foot-tall, red-haired, smallpox-scarred woman so feisty her Cherokee neighbors called her “Wahatche,” or “War Woman.” While her husband, Benjamin Hart, was off fighting for the American cause, Nancy Hart acted as a spy, hanging around British posts disguised as a feeble-minded man and keeping tabs on British troop movements and the activities of local Loyalists, or Tories.The best-known story about Hart concerns a half-dozen British soldiers who confiscated a turkey from her farm and demanded she cook it for them. She complied — while quietly removing their weapons with the help of her daughter. Then she held them at gunpoint, killing one soldier and wounding another when they tried to rush her. The rest were hanged by her neighbors.
The story gained a shot of veracity in 1912, when railroad construction workers unearthed skeletal remains near what had been the Hart farm. Several of the skeletons had had their necks broken. That was good enough proof to help cement Hart’s place in American Revolution history — and convince the folks in Georgia they were justified in naming a county after her — the only one of the state’s 159 counties named after a woman.
Jeremiah O’Brien
Ever wonder why the United States Navy has had five different ships named after Jeremiah O’Brien? No? Well here’s why anyway. Born in Maine in 1744 to a family in the lumber business, O’Brien and five of his brothers decided in early May 1775 to seize an American ship that was being forced to carry lumber for the British.Having seized the ship, the O’Briens then led a group of their neighbors in an attack on a British navy schooner, forcing it to surrender in what is considered the first American naval victory of the Revolutionary War, even though there wasn’t even an American navy yet. O’Brien later became the first captain in the Massachusetts Naval Militia. After the war, he was appointed a federal customs collector in his home port of Machias Maine.
Those U.S. Navy ships named after him? They include a torpedo boat and four destroyers. The liberty ship SS Jeremiah O’Brien, built in 1943 to ferry goods and troops during World War II, still floats in San Francisco Bay. And to top it off, film footage of the ship’s engines was used to depict those of the doomed ocean liner Titanic in the 1997 film of the same name. “Titanic,” not “O’Brien.”
Daniel Bissell
Here’s what Benedict Arnold, a woman’s torn dress, and America’s first military medal have in common: Daniel Bissell. Born in 1754, Bissell entered the Revolutionary War as a 22-year-old corporal from Connecticut. He served ably until August 1781, when he deserted to British-held New York City, eventually joining the British army and serving under the traitor Benedict Arnold. Only Bissell wasn’t really a deserter; he was a spy.Recruited by George Washington himself, Bissell spent 13 months in New York, suffering most of the time from a “fever” that kept him from fighting against his former comrades. He spent the time memorizing enemy positions and making maps and then found his way back to the American side with the info. For his heroics, Bissell was awarded the Badge of Military Merit, one of only three such awards given during the war.
The cloth badge was in the form of a purple heart. Although Washington was given credit for creating and awarding the badge, he apparently got the idea after Bissell accidentally tore a piece of his future wife’s dress off while dancing with her at a party at which Washington was present. Bissell also served in the “Quasi War” with France, this time as an officer, and died in 1824. In 1932, the Purple Heart became the award given to those wounded or killed while in U.S. military service. Nobody gave any awards to Arnold.
Salem Poor
About six months after the Battle of Bunker Hill, 14 American officers took the time to petition the Massachusetts legislature to recognize the bravery during the battle of a soldier named Salem Poor. The petition, which was the only one of its kind after the battle, said Poor had “behaved like an Experienced Officer as Well as an Excellent Soldier.” It didn’t spell out exactly what he had done. But the fact he was there at all was remarkable in itself.Salem Poor was born a slave on a Massachusetts farm in 1747. Somehow, he managed to save enough (£27, or about $6,500 in current currency) to buy his freedom at the age of 22. He joined the American cause in 1775 and re-enlisted in 1776. Poor served through the Battles of Monmouth and Saratoga, and spent the miserable winter of 1777–78 with Washington’s army at Valley Forge.
After the war, he had a tough go of it. Married four times, he lived for awhile in a Boston homeless shelter and was apparently run out of Providence Rhode Island for vagrancy. He died in 1802. But he did get a small measure of recognition in 1976, when the U.S. Post Office put his likeness on a 10-cent stamp to help commemorate America’s Bicentennial.
Deborah Sampson
Deborah Sampson was the only woman to earn a full military pension for participation in the American Army during the Revolutionary War — and she earned it as a man. Sampson was born in 1760 near Plymouth, Massachusetts. After serving a stretch as an indentured servant, Sampson became a teacher for two years. Then in early 1782, she bound her small breasts in a linen wrap, straightened herself to her full height of 5 foot, 9 inches (some three inches taller than the average adult male), and enlisted in the army as Robert Shurtleff.She was assigned to a light infantry unit, taking part in dangerous missions such as scouting, raiding parties, and foraging excursions. In a skirmish against a group of American Loyalists, Sherman was shot twice in the thigh. Fearful of her identity being discovered, she removed one of the musket balls herself, but the other was too deep. It remained in her leg the rest of her life.
Sherman served 17 months before she fell ill and was discovered. She was honorably discharged, eventually married a farmer, and in 1802 embarked on a year-long tour of lectures about her experiences. She began receiving a military pension from the state of Massachusetts in 1792, after waiting almost a decade. But it wasn’t until 1816 that Congress finally granted her a federal pension, and that was in large part because of the intercession of a friend of hers with some pull — Paul Revere.
Sampson died in 1827. Like Jeremiah O’Brien, profiled earlier in this chapter, Sampson had a liberty ship named after her during World War II. And she got a shout-out as a history-making woman from actress Meryl Streep during Streep’s speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.