Minutemen

In September 1774, Whig leaders in Worcester County, Massachusetts, decided to reorganize their militia companies. They had two goals: First they wanted to purge their ranks of Loyalists who might be untrustworthy in a potential confrontation with King George III. Second, they wanted to develop rapid-response light-infantry companies that could act quickly to a call of battle at a moment’s notice. Comprising 25 percent of each militia regiment, these hand-picked men became known as minutemen. In the following months, and encouraged by the provincial congress, other Massachusetts counties followed the same policy. By the time the British sent their large raiding party into the countryside on April 19, 1775 (see also Battles of Lexington and Concord), the minutemen had become a well-trained and effective fighting force. It was the minutemen who responded to this raid. While unsuccessful on Lexington Green, the minutemen beat back British light infantry units on Concord Bridge, and they inflicted heavy casualties on the British column on its retreat to Boston. The Massachusetts minutemen were absorbed into the army that lay siege to Boston in 1775 and early 1776. Other states formed minutemen units during the Revolutionary War (1775-83) largely to protect their communities when the Continental army was busy fighting the British elsewhere.

Molly Pitcher (1753?-1 832) Revolutionary War heroine

One of the most famous female figures to emerge from the Revolutionary War (1775-83) is that of Molly Pitcher, the camp follower who, at the Battle of Monmouth (June 28, 1778) in New Jersey, stepped forward to aid her wounded husband and his artillery unit. While that nickname “Molly Pitcher” has been generally applied to other women who participated in battlefield action, research consistently identifies Mary Hays as the woman of Monmouth fame. Apparently a Pennsylvanian by birth, Mary was only one among hundreds of women who accompanied their menfolk during the war. William Hays, her husband, was with the Pennsylvania State Regiment of Artillery at the Battle of Monmouth. The weather was fiercely hot that day, and men succumbed to the heat as much as to the British enemy’s gunfire. Mary, or “Captain Molly,” as one

Molly Pitcher at the Battle of Monmouth (National Archives)

Contemporary observer later called her, carried canteens of water to many of the stricken soldiers. Another eyewitness noted that while Mary was assisting her husband with the artillery piece, she had a portion of her petticoat shot away by an enemy cannonball. Yet another report claimed that when William became incapacitated, Mary took over the loading and firing of the gun, keeping it in service during the conflict. When the battle was over, however, she moved on with Continental army and remained an obscure heroine until years later, when reports of her actions at Monmouth gained wider recognition.

During her marriage to William, Mary had one son, John. William died in 1787, and, after a short widowhood, Mary wed John McCauly. A widow again by 1822, Pennsylvania records of that year showed that a “Molly McKolly,” apparently Mary Hays McCauly, petitioned for financial aid as the widow of a Revolutionary War soldier, and she received a pension of $40 per year for the rest of her life. Approximately 79 years of age at the time of her death in 1832, Molly McCauly is buried at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, beneath a monument proclaiming her “Renowned in History as Mollie Pitcher, the heroine of Monmouth.”

Further reading: Samuel Stelle Smith, A Molly Pitcher Chronology (Monmouth Beach, N. J.: Philip Freneau Press, 1972); “The Search for Molly Pitcher,” DAR Magazine (April 1975) 292-295.

—Rita M. Broyles