Woman on the American Frontier: A Valuable and Authentic History of the Heroism, Adventures, Privations, Captivities, Trials, and Noble Lives and Deaths of the "Pioneer Mothers of the Republic"Fowler, William Worthington
History
Woman on the American Frontier: A Valuable and Authentic History of the Heroism, Adventures, Privations, Captivities, Trials, and Noble Lives and Deaths of the "Pioneer Mothers of the Republic"
Fowler, William Worthington
Frontier and pioneer life -- United States; Women -- United States -- Biography
The same brave mind that had made her so admirable as a soldier's helpmeet,
upheld her through tedious hardships and continued perils on her lonely way
to the settlement. Once there, it was necessary for her to wait till she
could recover her exhausted strength. Her triumph over the severe tasking
of all those bitter days in the wilderness, without chronic injury, or even
temporary sickness, would be called now, in a woman, a miracle of
endurance.
As she passed on from parish to parish, the simple Canadian peasant, always
friendly to the American cause, welcomed with warm hospitality the handsome
young woman, the story of whose singular bravery and devotion had reached
their ears.
Her subsequent life and history is shrouded in obscurity. We know not
whether she married a husband worthier of such a partner in those trying
times, or whether she retired to brood alone over a sorrow with which shame
for the object of her grief must have mingled. Whatever her lot may have
been, her name deserves a place on the golden roll of our revolutionary
heroines.
As we have already remarked, only a few instances are on record where women
served in the army of the revolution as enlisted soldiers. Occasional
services performed under the guise of men, were more frequent. As bearers
of dispatches and disguised as couriers, they glided through the enemy's
lines. Donning their father's or brother's overcoats and hats, they
deceived the besiegers of the garrison into the belief that soldiers were
not lacking to defend it, and even ventured in male habiliments to perform
more perilous feats; such, for example, as the following:
Grace and Rachel Martin, the wives of two brothers who were absent with the
patriot army, receiving intelligence one evening that a courier under guard
of two British officers, would pass their house on a certain night with
important dispatches, resolved to surprise the party and obtain the papers.
Disguising themselves in their husband's outer garments, and providing
themselves with arms, they waylaid the enemy. Soon after they took their
station by the roadside, the courier and his escort made their appearance.
At the proper moment the disguised ladies sprang from their bushy covert,
and presenting their pistols, ordered the party to surrender their papers.
Surprised and alarmed, they obeyed without hesitation or the least
resistance. The brave women having put them on parole, hastened home by the
nearest route, which was a bypath through the woods, and dispatched the
documents to General Greene.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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