| 10-13 TABLE of CONTENTS:
The Legends of Molly Pitcher
Women Were On The Battlefields
Minerva Thoughts on Molly P
Legend
Women Fought in All U.S. Wars;
Wore Men's Clothing
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTES by
Christabel Pankhurst, Cyra McFadden, and Jane Addams.
The
Legends of Molly Pitcher
Mary McCauley (McCulla - McKolly), born
Oct. 13, 1754, is one of the choices to be the "real" Molly Pitcher.
Other candidates are Molly Corbin, Anna Maria Lane, Elizabeth Canning .
. . with many others contributing to the legends.
There was no single Molly Pitcher . . . she is
nothing more than a compilation of legends and popular histories that purport
to describe the actions of a brave Molly Pitcher who defied convention
(and hostile fire) to fire her husband's cannon.
Even some of authoritative biographical dictionaries
have printed muddled versions of who Molly Pitcher was, some saying she
was McCauley and others saying Molly Corbin..
The term "Molly Pitcher" was probably
what was used by soldiers in battle calling for the "water boy"
(who was generally a woman) as men today say, "hey girl," (or
"hey nurse" or "hey, waitress,") " or even "medic!"
According to some legends, Mary Hay McCauley was
a water carrier at the Battle of Monmouth June 28, 1778 where she loaded
and fired a cannon after her husband was killed (some say collapsed from
the heat).
In an embellishment of the legend, a cannonball
supposedly passed between her legs tearing her skirt (although the water
carriers always tied their skirts up so they could move around. With skirts
at the normal length, they'd trip or be much hampered in their movements.)
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Women Were On The Battlefields
The carefully constructed Molly legend, although glorifying one single
act and thus is a favorite in the hero-minded, hides the most important
PERVASIVE fact, a critical fact that HIStorians somehow ignore:
i.e, that McCauley or water-carrying-women were already on the battlefield
facing the same dangers as the men-soldiers.
These women carried water, food, and military supplies to the soldiers
on the battlefield - and tended the wounded there - all under the
same cannon and musket fire that killed and wounded the soldiers. It was
common for women to be on all battlefields and travel with the armies in
all countries - from time immemorial - although HIStorians and artists
never seem to catch a glimpse of them. (One exception is noted below and
it was written by a woman.)
Only men seemed to die heroically. There is never a mention of any of
the "Molly Pitchers," those women carrying water, food, even
ammunition being wounded or killed by all that musket or ball fire that
somehow knew not to strike a feminine form! Talk about "smart bombs!"
(There is one version of the legend that says after she fired and fired
and fired the cannon, she was wounded in the breast (where else???)
by grapeshot.
Whole battalions of women traveled with armies. Called "camp followers"
in modern texts that appear to denigrate them, they were essential to the
army that traveled on its feet.
Mostly they were wives or female relatives of soldiers like McCauley,
or women who for various reasons needed to be self-supporting in a man's
world that didn't allow them many alternatives - especially if the wage
earner of the family went to war. The absent male of the family going to
war often left the women and children behind destitute with no means to
earn a living. (There were no military dependants' stipends in those days.)
Some of the camp followers could have been prostitutes but they were
in-large, honest, hardworking cooks, launderers, nurses, etc., even beasts
of burden (see the description below). No army of men of the times could
have operated without them.
The women traveling with armies did the service analogous to today's
males performing non-combatant jobs in the modern armies of WWI and II
(such as cooking, laundry, secretarial, drivers). The women are not recognized
but when those same jobs are/were held by men, those men receive service
medals and overseas pay and official HIStorical recognition.
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An artist's conception of Molly at the cannon.
Minerva Thoughts on Molly P Legend
WOA was the beneficiary of several discussions on the Minerva Military
Women's email list and particularly Dr. Linda Grant De Pauw, founder and
president of The MINERVA Center, Inc., a non-profit educational foundation
devoted to promoting the study of women and the military and women in war.
Materials of permanent value are stored at http://h-net.msu.edu/~minerva
Holly Mayer wrote (used with permission):
"I have been very intrigued
by all the messages concerning camp followers in general and Molly Pitcher
in particular. Let me add my two cents worth . . .
"Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley was a real person,
Molly Pitcher is essentially a mythological being built upon the reality
of the person of Mary and her actions. Molly Pitcher is more than Mary
McCauley -- she stands in to represent the thousands of women followers
who served with the Continental Army and survived the war. Given that,
we can still call Mary McCauley Molly Pitcher.
"I think much of the controversy arises out of
the fact that McCauley's story and that of her "sisters" remained
in the realm of oral culture for so long -- it took a while for their adventures
and contributions to be written down.
"Furthermore, note that there were conflicting
male reactions to these tales--just as there were to these women and their
actions during the war itself. An example can be found in Herman Mann's
"The Female Review: Life of Deborah Sampson" as he extolled her
patriotic contributions but said that he hoped others would not follow
her example. (Ed. note: Sampson donned men's clothing and fought as a regular
soldier.) I believe that the tension engendered by desires to praise vs
those to condemn had an affect on whether stories were told and how they
were told.
"Another woman's story worth knowing is that
of Anna Maria Lane who followed her husband to war and then fought in it.
Sandra G. Treadway wrote an article about Lane in - Virginia Cavalcade
(Winter 1988).
"Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley was a real person,
Molly Pitcher is essentially a mythological being built upon the reality
of the person of Mary and her actions."
Professor De Pauw added the following:
"I agree that Mary McCulla
(or whatever spelling you choose) was a real person, but I do not believe
the myth was inspired by her.
"A woman named Mary, widow of William
Hays, who came to live in Carlisle in 1783 -- well after the battle
of Monmouth. Her second husband had the variously-spelled name beginning
with the letter M. In January 1822,
Mary applied for a pension from the state of Pennsylvania
as `Molly McKolly [sic], widow of a soldier of the Revolutionary War.'
The bill wound its way through three readings in the Pennsylvania Senate
and passed without amendment, then went for two readings in the Pennsylvania
House before being amended to read `for services rendered' in place of
`widow of a soldier' before passing. There are no surviving papers or proceedings
to explain why the change was made.
However less than a month later, on March 7, 1822,
the following editorial was printed in the (New York) National Advocate.
It is probably the best evidence we are ever likely to get as to what Mary's
activity during the Revolution was believed to be while she was still alive.
"There is no mention of the Battle of Monmouth
or of a cannon although the fact that her story was told to win a pension
would surely have encouraged her to put in anything that would improve
her account.
"'Molly Macauly
[sic], who received a pension from the State of Pennsylvania for service
rendered during the Revolutionary War, was well-known to the general officers
as a brave and patriotic woman. She was called Sgt. McCauly [sic] and was
wounded at some battle, supposed to be the Brandywine, where her sex was
discovered. . . . It was an unusual circumstance to find women in the ranks
disguised as men, such was their ardor for independence.'
"(It is interesting that the editorial continues
with the observation),
`Elizabeth Canning was at a gun at Fort Washington
when her husband was killed and she took his place immediately, loaded,
primed and fired the cannon with which he was entrusted. She was wounded
in the breast by grapeshot. . . '
"The Continental
Congress passed a resolution on July 6, 1779 awarding a pension to '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.' Corbin, like Mary Hays, was
the wife of a man in Proctor's artillery. But the editorial writer clearly
believes that Hays, was NOT the woman at the cannon at Fort Washington
or anywhere else.
"If any real woman was the inspiration for the
first Molly Pitcher/ Captain Molly stories and prints that appeared after
1840, it would not have been the person disinterred from an unmarked grave
in Carlisle and reburied under a stone marked "Molly Pitcher"
on July 4, 1876. Indeed, there are enough other stories from other wars
involving woman-at-the-cannon vignettes to make an invention out of whole
cloth for the American Revolution not improbable.
"Consider the Canadian women . . . and also Agostina,
the Maid of Saragossa, immortalized by Goya and Byron, who was very much
a real person who continued to dine out on her reputation for the rest
of her life. When Mary McCullla died, her obituary made no mention of the
Monmouth story."
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Women Fought in All U.S. Wars; Wore Men's Clothing
At least 400 women are known to have participated in the U.S. Civil
War on BOTH sides - and an additional unknown number cross-dressed and
fought and died as male soldiers.
"Laundresses, prostitutes, female combatants,
and other camp followers, including wives, were often collectively referred
to as vivandiers, whether they fit the definition or not...That women accompanied
Civil War soldiers into the fields with their regiments is an historically
established fact."
--
Quoted from U.S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks,
Pennsylvania.
While moving the graves
of the Union dead near Gesaca, Georgia, for reinterment to a national cemetery
in 1886, the body of Charles Johehouse, Private 6th MO was noticeable by
its small feet. Closer examination proved Johehouse to be a woman in full
uniform shot through the head. Her real name is unknown.
Human bones unearthed
outside Shiloh Battlefield Park while a home owner was planting a garden
turned out to be those of nine union soldiers, eight men and one woman.
Johnson, Mary Jane, age
16, was discovered to be a woman while at the Belle Island Prison in 1863.
She had been with the 11th Kentucky Cavalry for about a year. Nellie, a
soldier with the 102nd New York fought at Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg,
and Lookout Mountain before being discovered to be a woman.
Whatever the numbers of
women who fought in the Civil war, the following quote indicates that the
problem of women who dressed, fought and died as men was too common to
ignore:
"In the early years of the war, regulations
were lax due to the desperate need for battlefield replacement. Anyone
who was willing and looked like they could fight was handed a gun. Later
in the last year of the war, soldiers were required to strip to the waist
for examination."
--
Hearts of Fire ... Soldier Women of the Civil War by Lee Middleton.
ISBN #1-882755-00-6. Privately printed.
(WOAH note: The number of women were formally recognized as U.S.
soldiers in past wars increases almost daily as women historians mine the
military archives (and old newspapers) that often dutifully recorded such
aberrant behavior. One wonders what the motives of the historians was when
they completely ignored such information. Somehow one would have to stretch
one's imagination to award them their cherished titles of "impartial"
recorders and interpreters of the past. From discussions on Minerva's email
list it appears that some men resent the fact of women being something
other than helpless airheads (or see women's military service as an afront
to their masculinity) that they will not admit the obvious regarding women's
service IN the military.)
"As
many of 20,000 women marched with the British and American armies. These
women acted as paid and unpaid cooks, nurses, doctors, laundresses, guides,
seamstresses, and porters. It appears that more women served the British
than with the American army because, of course, the Americans could rely
on local help....
"A matron described
the appearance of the British force as it entered Cambridge, Massachusetts:
'I never had the least idea that the Creation produced such a sordid set
of creatures in human figure -- poor, dirty, emaciated men, great numbers
of women who seemed to be the beasts of burden, having a bushel baskets
on their backs, by which they were bent double, the contents seemed to
be pots and kettles, various sorts of furniture, children peeking through
the gridirons and other utensils, some very young infants who were born
on the road, the women bare feet, clothed in dirty rags."
--
Above quote from A History of Women in Americaby Carol Hymowitz,
Carol and Michaele Weissman. New York: Bantam Books, 1978. Printed in cooperation
with the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.
(Ed. note: Ah, the officers and gentlemen who defended women's honor in
the gallant days of powdered wigs ... not quite the picture HIStorians
like to paint ... How they love to ignore the fact that only a very few
women - those with money - were honored while the other 98% were without
any rights and treated without regard to their human attributes.)
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10-13 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
 B.
10-13-1853, Lillie Langtry - English actor of legendary talent and charm,
and theater manager. Oscar Wilde wrote Lady Windemere's Fan (1892)
for her.
B. 10-13-1870, Della May Fox - U.S. singer/actor. DMF was considered
to have been the highest paid variety performer of her time. She toured
the U.S. with her own company. She had bouts of ill health because of drugs
and alcohol. DMF all but retired from the stage when she married in 1900.
B. 10-13-1871, Eleanor Clarke Slagle - U.S. social-welfare worker. ECS
was one of the founders of the American Occupational Therapy Association
(1917). She started her therapy career at Jane Addams Hull House in Chicago
(1917) and becoming directed of the OT program for all of Illinois (1918),
and then for New York in 1922. Another of the remarkable network of women
gathered by Jane Addams that changed the social conscience of the world.
B. 10-13-1872, Louise Closser Hale - U.S. actor. Seen extensively on
stage and screen, LCH was a highly respected and beloved character actor.
She also wrote successful novels and travel books. Her best known novel
was Soul and Her Body (1912) that was made into a play.
B. 10-13-1877, Josephine Goldmark - U.S. researcher. JG was a
meticulous social researcher who provided the voluminous materials gathered
from books and direct research to support legislation and reform in the
fields of child labor, working hours, nurse training, radium poisoning,
etc. Among those who benefited from her work were Frances Perkins and Florence
Kelley as well as the famous legal briefs of her brother-in-law Louis D.
Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter - both men who gained such fame from their
legal acumen that they were advanced to the U.S. Supreme Court. It is amazing
that any one woman could have done so much solid, effective research -
without a computer!
B. 10-13-1891, Irene Rich - U.S. actor. Abandoned her career
as a successful real estate agent to become a popular star of the silent
screen and Broadway. She appeared in scores of melodramas in the 1920-30
and was successful on radio.
B. 10-13-1901, Edith Spurloch Sampson - U.S. attorney. Was the
first black woman to be elected to Illinois bench. She served as Judge
of the Cook County Circuit Court (1962). ESS was alternate U.S. delate
to the 5th General Assembly of the United Nations.
10-13-1905: On this day the conspiracy of silence against women's
efforts to obtain the vote in England was broken when Christabel Pankhurst
and Annie Kenney were arrested for demonstrating for the vote. Previously,
the police had merely moved the women away and the press ignored the incidents,
but this time the women fought back and the newspapers were forced to carry
stories of the arrests.
Christabel stated afterwards
that she knew she had to do something to cause a commotion. With a burly
policeman pinning her arms and carrying her away as usual, there was nothing
else she could think of to do: she spat in his face.
He was forced to
officially arrest her. Consequently the suffrage movement moved onto the
front pages of the British newspapers as man writer after man writer expressed
horror at the actions of "those" women. Obviously taking part
in public affairs did terrible things to women's tender minds - and it
would certainly end civilization.
But the silence was broken
and women began to speak up all over England as they realized they were
not alone. Twelve years later, in 1917, women over 30 had the vote. Suffrage
for all women in England would come in 1928.
Of course the more flamboyant
actions of the Pankhurst forces did not accomplish suffrage on its own.
Actually there was a quiet branch of the British women's suffrage movement
that dealt directly with members of the government and parliament on a
one-to-one basis, and in the overview, they were more effective in actually
getting things done.
Event 10-13-1914: Annette Abbott Adams became the first U.S. federal
prosecutor who was also a woman when she was sworn in an Attorney General
in California.
B. 10-13-1920, Laraine Day - U.S. stage and screen actor.
B. 10-13-1925, Margaret Thatcher - British prime minister. MT
served as England's first woman prime minister 1979-1991. She was the first
British prime minister to win three consecutive terms and Europe's first
woman prime minister. Her mother was a dressmaker. (Vigdis Finnbogadottir
was elected president of Iceland 06-30-1980 and would be reelected 1984
and 1988 to become the first democratically elected female head of state
in the history of western civilization. Finnbogadottir was elected by the
DIRECT vote of the people while Thatcher was elected by her party members
in parliament.)
B. 10-13-1936, Elizabeth Furse - U.S. Representative to Congress
from Oregon (1993--). She was active in the Oegon Peace Institute and
co-operator of a vineyard.
Event 10-13-1939, Evelyn Kilgore receives her certification from
the Civil Aeronautics Authority as the first woman flight instructor.
She was an instructor at Tri-City Airport in southern California. She had
soloed after only eight hours of instruction and was very active in flying.
However, she dutifully gave a "oh gosh, oh gee, little 'ole girl me
can't compete with men; I'm just playing," interview. Or perhaps the
statement was written for her by one of the men who were shamed into joining
the CAA under the program that used the ploy "If a woman can fly,
certainly you, a man, ought to be able to."
"Girls
make good flyers. They learn slower because they don't understand the mechanical
end of flying the way men do. But they are smoother and more careful. Men
like to 'kick a ship around.' Sometimes they get a little foolish. Women
respect a plane more, feel their way into the business of flying better.
"Women don't get
as far as men do because they fritter around. They have to spend money
and time on clothes and cosmetics and things like that. They just about
get started and they fall in love too . . . Men are different. When they
start flying they stick to it. If they have a girl, they bring the girl
to the field. Pretty soon she's flying too sometimes."
--
Kilgore quote from United States Women in Aviation (1940-1985) by
Deborah G. Douglas.
B. 10-13-1952, Elaine Garzarelli - U.S.financial analyst. Using
her own set of economist indicators, EG was almost the only one to predict
the stockmarket crash of 10-19-1987, a prediction she announced on national
TV before the fact.
Reported to earn an income
of $1.5 million (unusual then) she was the first to be fired from her job
in 1994 as a "cost cutting measure." She formed her own company
Garzarellie Capital, Inc. Although her father was in banking, it was her
mother who urged her to go into "a man's business."
B. 10-13-1958, Maria Cantwell - U.S. Representative to Congress from
Washington state (1993-95). A public relations consultant, she was
a member of the Washington legislature.
B. 10-13-1959, (Olive) Marie Osmund - U.S. singer.
B. 10-13-1969 Nancy Kerrigan - U.S. figure skater. NK was the
victim of a bungled physical attack by the husband and friend of one of
her rivals. The attack mildly injured her leg and ruined the career of
her rival. NK later won the silver medal at the Olympics and ridiculed
the young Russian girl who edged her out for the gold. NK turned pro and
is featured at Disney shows.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
PANKHURST, CHRISTABEL
"Be ready when the
hour comes, to show that women are human and have the pride and dignity
of human beings. Through such resistance our cause will triumph.
"But even if it does not, we fight not only for
success, but in order that some inward feeling may have satisfaction. We
fight that our pride, our self-respect, our dignity may not be sacrificed
in the future as they have been in the past."
McFADDEN, CYRA
"One of my correspondents
has me convinced that the human race would be saved if the world became
one huge nudist colony. I keep thinking how much harder it would be to
carry concealed weapons."
ADDAMS, JANE
"The new demand of
women for political enfranchisement comes at a time when unsatisfactory
and degraded social conditions are held responsible for so much wretchedness
and when the fate of all the unfortunate, the suffering and the criminal
is daily forced upon woman s attention in painful and intimate ways."
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