Sex Change in the Revolutionary War?  by Tom Reynolds

Women weren’t permitted to serve in the military during the  Revolutionary War.  At least not openly. 

Deborah Sampson from Uxbridge, Massachusetts disguised herself as a man and fought under the alias of Robert Shurtliff, the name of her deceased brother.

She served in the light infantry company of the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment.  Deborah mustered into service in the spring of 1782 and saw action in Westchester County, New York, where she was wounded in her thigh and forehead. Not wanting her identity to be revealed during medical care she permitted physicians to treat her head wound and then slipped out of the field hospital unnoticed, where she extracted one of the bullets from her thigh with a penknife and sewing needle.  (Rambo would be proud) The other bullet was lodged too deep and could not be removed, so her leg never fully healed.

After serving for a year and a half, in 1783, she fell ill while in Philadelphia. She was taken to a hospital, where a high fever caused her to lose consciousness, ultimately leading to the discovery of her true identity.

After the Treaty of Paris, she was given an honorable discharge from the army by Henry Knox. Like other veterans of the Continental Army, she was continually petitioning the state and federal government for her service pension.

She later married and had three children settling down in Sharon, Massachusetts. To help make ends meet she often gave public lectures about her wartime service. By the time she died in 1827, she was collecting minimal pensions for her service from Massachusetts and the federal government. In her memory a statue stands today outside the public library, in Sharon, honoring her Revolutionary War service and sacrifices.

Not really transgender, but she was one tough cookie!  Can you imagine removing a bullet with a pen knife and a sewing needle; that had to hurt.

Mary Ludwig Hays, better known as Molly Pitcher earned fame at the Battle of Monmouth, in 1778.  Hays first brought soldiers water from a local well to quench their thirst on an extremely hot and humid day and then replaced her wounded husband at his artillery piece, firing at the oncoming British.

Margaret Corbin was severely wounded during the British assault on Fort Washington in November 1776 and left for dead alongside her husband, also an artilleryman, until she was attended by a physician. She lived, though her wounds left her permanently disabled. She was the first American female to receive a soldier’s lifetime pension after the war.

Women are the fastest growing demographic among modern day gun owners.  But obviously from above, they have a history of patriotism and understand the need to “keep and bear arms.”