Molly Pitcher

What do all three of the women in these three images have in common? A: they each depict the American Revolutionary war heroine Molly Pitcher, and B: none of them are real. Real, as in, there was no OG Molly Pitcher historians can trace.

Stories about about a woman called “Captain Molly” who served in the American Revolution first appeared in 1826 with the “Recollections of Washington,” recordings that George Washington’s step-grandson made of his famed ancestor’s life. In them was a story of “Captain Molly” who bravely brought water to soldiers at the Battle of Monmouth, who fought using her husband’s cannon after he died. According to this account, Washington recognized her by giving her a piece of gold. (See third picture.)

Molly eventually got “Pitcher” attached to her epithet later in the 19th century, starting with the Currier lithograph “Molly Pitcher, The Heroine of Monmouth,” from 1848 (2nd picture).

There were real people Molly Pitcher was based on — Mary Hays McCauley is one of them, and her grave is marked in Carlisle Pennsylvania near where I live (first picture). Mary Hays was born either in 1744 or 1754; during her lifetime she was given a $40 grant in recognition of her service in the Revolutionary War — exactly what service she rendered was not specified. Mary’s story got mixed together with other real-life women in the early decades of the 19th century: women like Elizabeth Canning, who dressed as a man to fight in the war, and Margaret Corbin, who took her husband’s place in battle and was wounded by grapeshot and captured by the British.

It’s interesting the way Molly Pitcher got remembered, though. The mid-19th century amalgamation dropped the aggressive moniker “Captain” to favor the more domesticated water-carrying “Pitcher.” In the 1856 painting, the Molly presented to Washington is demure and feminine. Finally, the Molly Pitcher shown in the Currier engraving from 1848 has Molly’s dead husband at her feet, making her wartime aggression explainable in terms of a widow’s grief. These images tell us about what 19th-c folks wanted from a woman heroine rather than the real Molly.