1778 â âMolly Pitcher,â Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley, wife of an American artilleryman.
Born in 1754, Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley was the daughter of a New Jersey dairy farmer. At the age of 13, she went to work as a domestic/servant and married a barber named William Hays. When the Revolutionary War began, William enlisted and became a gunner in the Pennsylvania Artillery. Mary eventually joined her husband as a campfollower during the Philadelphia Campaign (1777-1778) in New Jersey, eventually wintering with the Army at Valley Forge.
Legend says that Mary was carrying water for the troops at the Battle of Monmouth in June, 1778, but when her husband the artilleryman was wounded, she abandoned her water jugs and took up loading the artillary in his place. Joseph Plumb Martin, a soldier in the Continental Army, was present at the battle. His memoirs, discovered in the 1950s, have become an important primary source for historians interested in the experiences of ordinary soldiers during the revolution. Plumb relates an incident during the battle:
“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 stemp, a cannon shot from the enemey 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.”
Washington is said to have observed her heroics on the battlefield and issued her a commendation, and Mary was allegedly called by the nickname “Sergeant Molly” for the rest of her life.
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