Walking the Berkshires

The Remains of Margaret Corbin Lost and Found

(image courtesy of Washington Heights) Visitors to West Point who venture behind the Old Cadet Chapel have the opportunity to view a grave marker honoring Revolutionary War heroine Margaret Corbin.  Throughout this series of posts, we have seen how the story of this disabled veteran of the Pennsylvania Invalid Corps and the Battle of Fort Washington took on the elements of legend, became confounded in memory with that of Molly Pitcher, and appears to have been embellished in certain key respects by later historians, such as the service of her supposed soldier husband.

The evidence behind the identification of her original grave site and her exhumation for reburial at West Point offers a fascinating coda to this tale.  It involves the rediscovery of her story following the Centennial of the Revolution, and in particular the interest of the Daughters of the American Revolution.  The D.A.R., established in 1890 by descendants of Revolutionary veterans as a women's service organization to promote their patriotic memory, found an ideal heroine in Margaret Corbin.  In 1900, the Margaret Corbin Chapter, D.A.R. of Chelsea, Massachusetts received its charter. While the veteran ancestors of the D.A.R. might well have honored Corbin, it is doubtful whether women of their station in Corbin's day would have regarded her in the same light. 

In her final years, the disabled Corbin appears to have become obnoxious to society.  After her wounding and evacuation from Fort Washington in 1776, she was transported to Pennsylvania.  Sometime after that, while her supporters petitioned the Commonwealth and Congress for her relief, she was enrolled in the Pennsylvania Invalid Corps as a private soldier, mustering out with her regiment at West Point in 1783.  Margaret Corbin appears to have remained in the Hudson Highlands thereafter, and the commander of West Point corresponded with Secretary of War Henry Knox throughout the 1780s concerning her condition while she was in the care of a Mrs Randall in what is now Highland Falls, New York.  In 1795, he wrote to Knox: "I am at a loss what to do with Capt. Molly. She is such an offensive person that people are unwilling to take her in charge."

 It appears that Margaret Corbin, a woman in her 40s, was unable to dress herself or to bathe, and according to one modern retelling was "was rebuffed by the ladies of the town because of her uncleanness and disagreeable temper. Margaret spent most her days at the post smoking her pipe and finding companionship among the soldiers."  She also was entitled to an allotment of rum that came with her veteran's pension, which may have been a comfort to her but would not have appealed to the ideal of womanhood that prevailed in her time (or to women's service organizations at the turn of the 20th century, for that matter, which were often strongly in favor of temperance).  It seems the unvarnished reality of her condition was also unacceptable to the Philadelphia Society of Women, which this source claims had considered erecting a monument in her honor while she was still alive but recoiled upon meeting her, discovering "that she was a hard-drinking impoverished veteran and [so] canceled the memorial to the first woman heroine of the Battle of New York."

Various sources place her death about 1800.  She was buried, presumably in the Highlands, and her grave and memory were all but forgotten for most of the remaining century until later historians began piecing together her story from the available records and folklore of the region around the time of the Centennial of the Revolution.  It was not until the 1920s, however, that a concerted effort was made to locate her remains, and it was lead by the New York State Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.  They verified her pension and service records and also consulted the papers of Henry Knox, then set about finding her resting place.  With the help of a riverboat captain, who claimed his grandfather helped with the burial in 1800,  an overgrown grave was located containing the remains of a female that were sent to West Point for a post mortem.  The West Point surgeon confirmed that the remains were Corbin's based on evidence that the "left side of the face, left shoulder, chest and upper arm were badly battered".  These wounds are consistent with testimony given to Congress that she was deprived of the use of one arm and claims made by historians beginning in 1877 that she had been injured by grapeshot in the left shoulder. 

With this certification in hand, the way was open to reinter the remains of Margaret Corbin with full honors at West Point and erect another monument in Highland Falls.  The Time Magazine coverage of the day once again mistakes her for Molly Pitcher of Monmouth. 

I will note that it is particularly fortuitous that local knowledge preserved a precise secondhand memory of the location of her grave more than 125 years after her death.  It is also very interesting that the grave was discovered on J.P. Morgan's estate in Highland Falls. 

As there is no better evidence proving or disproving these as the remains of Margaret Corbin, there I will let her lie.  She was an old soldier, that is certain, and she suffered much from wounds received in battle.  We can honor that, even if parts of the story may not be all that they appear.

The complete Margaret Corbin Series can be found here.

A Friend in Need: Margaret Corbin's Powerful Protector

It was not unusual for women to accompany 18th-century armies in the field.  It was less common in the American forces at the outset of the Revolution, but became increasingly more so as the war progressed.   Some regiments - those drawing from immigrant populations from continental Europe in particular - did bring or attract a number of female camp followers.   "The German Regiment", raised from among German speaking communities in Pennsylvania and Maryland, listed more than a dozen women drawing rations at the outset of Sullivan's expedition against the Iroquois in 1779.  At winter quarters during 1778-1779, it is estimated that the 22 companies of Knox's Continental Artillery had an average of three women camp followers per company.  That is an interesting piece of information, as we shall see.

Margaret Corbin, heroine of the Battle of Fort Washington, might have accompanied her soldier husband to war with a Pennsylvania unit, just the way her story has been retold by later historians.  I have been making the hypothesis in this series of posts that there are reasons to suspect some of the critical assumptions in this story, including the claim that she had a husband named John Corbin who was killed (some say mortally wounded) serving the guns of Proctor's 1st Battalion of Pennsylvania Artillery in the defence of the Fort.  Margaret Corbin was certainly wounded there, but I do not believe Proctor's unit was anywhere near northern Manhattan at the time of the battle, and can find no record in the available sources on-line of the service of a John Corbin. 

Revolutionary War records are notoriously incomplete.  Nevertheless, stories inevitably grow in the telling and the case of Margaret Corbin is no exception.  She has been frequently confused with the woman associated with legend of Molly Pitcher, who was also associated with Proctor's Artillery and is said to have swabbed the guns at Monmouth. Very possibly the idea that Margaret Corbin's artilleryman husband was part of this unit stems from the same confusion.

We do have a number of colonial and early Federal era documents that relate to Margaret Corbin, her injuries in battle, and the recognition of her service and sacrifice as the recipient of the first military pension ever awarded to a woman by Congress.  When there was renewed interest in our patriot forebears following the Revolution's Centennial, The Magazine of American History published a fascinating investigation of Margaret Corbin's story and reprinted several of these key documents in its "notes and queries" pages.  Congress acted with atypical alacrity to relieve her "deplorable situation" and heeded the recommendation of the Pennsylvania authorities that she be provided for, and that raises questions about how a crippled camp follower of frontier background got their bureaucratic attention. 

One of the magazine correspondents notes that "I have been unable to find the originals of Margaret Corbin papers after careful search.  But they may turn up yet.  At present, we know nothing further than the papers as printed in Coll. Records vol xii page 34."  There is also a tantalizing list of other sources for "Captain Molly" - three of which turn out to be about Molly Pitcher - but the last of which may offer a clue as to Margaret Corbin's possible protector:

"...Major Boynton's History of West Point, page 167, where part of the correspondence with General Knox is modestly suppressed."

Even for 1886, such language carries the whiff of scandal, but just whose standards of decency might have been betrayed in the expurgated letters would be hard to judge without reading them.  Luckily, Boynton's text is available on-line, and reveals more about Margaret Corbin's reduced condition after the war and the interest taken in her welfare by powerful men, including the former chief of the Continental Artillery and now Secretary of War, Major General Henry Knox.

Boynton clearly confuses "Captain Molly" Corbin, the pensioner at West Point, with Molly Pitcher on Monmouth.  He reproduces several letters from Major George Fleming, commander at West Point where the tiny remnant of the American Army was garrisoned after the war - to Henry Knox, in whose regiment Fleming had previously served.  Knox evidently knew the subject of these letters well enough so that the name "Captain Molly" was sufficient to identify her.  This indicates either a degree of minor celebrity as that unique creature, a wounded woman warrior, or personal familiarity with her case. 

It seems remarkable that the Secretary of War would be asked to provide her with undergarments, but two of the three letters reproduced by Boynton address her "want of shifts" and requests that three of four be made for her.  Boynton then writes:

"Molly is described as usually appearing with an artilleryman's coat over her skirts.  She was brusque, coarse, red-haired, wholly wanting in feminine charms, and one of her biographers has recorded that she made use of swear words"

Perhaps here, too, Boynton has confounded Margaret Corbin with the Molly Pitcher legend, though it may well be the case that she was just as described.  Certainly she was a wounded veteran who had been carried on the rolls of the Pennsylvania Regiment as a private soldier despite her debilitating wounds until the end of the war.  Possibly the missing correspondence contained evidence of her "coarse habits", but then in her masculine role she was little different from many other veteran soldiers.  Yet she was different, because she was a woman and a symbol, even then, of noble sacrifice, stepping into her dead husband's place and receiving honorable wounds in the fight for her country.

Henry Knox married into a family of means (though as Tories their lands were forfeit and only his wife was able to inherit).  His origins were humble, and he was close in age to Margaret Corbin.  At least one history identifies the commander of the artillery at the place where Margaret Corbin fought as Captain Pierce, who had been one of Knox's officers.  In June of 1779 when Congress voted Margaret Corbin a pension and suit of clothes, Knox was with Washington's Army outside Philadelphia, where Margaret Corbin was an invalid.  He also commanded at West Point near the end of the war, where Margaret Corbin and the Invalid Corps were garrisoned.

I do not believe there was an improper relationship between the commander and and camp follower.  I believe he was her patron, however.  I believe he listened to his officers who told him that a woman of the artillery had fought and bled in her husband's place and that he had the political clout and position to ensure that she received relief from those in authority.  I believe that without a fallen husband, she would have been deprived of the honorable widowhood that bolstered her case and kept her from being considered a fallen woman.  And I believe Henry Knox cared enough about her case after the war that he would have tried to get her the underclothes and other case she required as her health declined.  I wish I had the rest of the correspondence!

 

 

Good Golly, Captain Molly Corbin

Margaret Corbin was the first woman in American history awarded a military pension in recognition of her heroic deeds in battle.  That much is clear, but much of her story appears to have been embellished - or possibly suppressed.  Along the way her identity became confused with the Molly Pitcher of Monmouth legend, which refers to a completely different time and place than the steep slopes at the north end of Manhattan Island where Margaret Corbin fought and bled. 

During the last several days, I have tried to separate the available primary sources from secondary accounts and speculation by subsequent historians about Margaret Corbin's story.  I began by searching for the moment i the historic record when her alleged soldier husband acquired a name and regiment, and along the way began to question other parts of her story that I do not expect to resolve through mining the Internet for a few brief blog posts.  I have some questions, and the beginning of an explanatory hypothesis, about one of the undisputed facts of Margaret Corbin's life - her military pension - and the uncharacteristic speed in which a contentious Congress acted on her behalf.  I have no desire to traduce her memory or accomplishments, but I am interested in the evolution of her story and the sources behind what is generally repeated as if it were documented fact. 

There is no denying that Margaret "Captain Molly" Corbin received singular recognition during the Revolution as a wounded woman warrior.  She gained the attention of at least one powerful patron who saw to it that she was pensioned and provided for.  Then she vanished into obscurity and an unmarked grave, only to be rediscovered and rehabilitated in the latter half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, fleshed out to fulfill the requirements of contemporary times and values.  She has been lost and found by researchers in nearly every generation since the 1870s, and has become such a powerful symbol that in 2007 her good name provided an unexpected solution to a Brooklyn street name controversy involving a racist namesake.

If we are going to get to the hard questions, it will help to give a brief synopsis of the current version of her story.

Margaret (Cochran) Corbin was no stranger to adversity.  She was born on November 12, 1751 to Scotch-Irish parents near Chambersburg in what is today Franklin County, Pennsylvania.  It was a vulnerable frontier existence, made far more precarious by the outset of hostilities with France and its Indian allies.  In June, 1756, a war party killed her father Robert and carried her mother off into captivity.  A single report from 1758 reportedly indicates that Mrs. Cochran was seen 100 miles west of the Ohio but the surviving Cochrans never saw her again.  The orphaned children - 5-year-old Margaret and her little brother John - were raised by their uncle.

Margaret reportedly grew to be very tall for a woman of that time (5'8").  She is supposed to have married John Corbin in 1772, and all that is said about him is that he was a farmer from Virginia.  As we have seen in previous posts in this series, he is alleged to have joined a Pennsylvania artillery unit - sometimes identified (I believe erroneously) as Proctor's 1st Pennsylvania Company or Battalion of Artillery.  According to the story, she accompanied the regiment in the field.

The Corbins are said to have been present at an outer work of Fort Washington, New York which bore the brunt of the fighting on November 16th, 1776 when it was assaulted by a Hessian column.  Captain Ewald of the Hessian Jagers, who was present but engaged at another part of the field, later recorded in his memoirs:

 "The Knyphausen Corps began the attack under the fire of five or six hundred riflemen who were lying in the wood under the fortifications.  All obstacles including the almost inaccessible cliffs and an abatis two hundred paces deep were overcome successfully, and one outer work after another was captured under the heaviest grapeshot and small-arms fire."

The defenders at this point were the 250 or so men of the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Battalion, and a battery of three field pieces.  John Corbin is described as a matross in the artillery battery that fought here. After he fell as one of the 53 Americans numbered by British General Howe as killed in the attack, "Molly" Corbin went into action.  The Supreme Council of Pennsylvania described her in a letter sent to Congress dated June 29th, 1779 as "wounded and utterly disabled at Fort Washington while heroically filling the post of her husband who was killed by her side serving a piece of artillery."  78 years later, Edward F. De Lancey of the New York Historical Society described her wounds more precisely as caused by "three grapeshot in the shoulder", and later histories have gone further describing a lacerated left breast, as well as the loss of the use of an arm which is further documented by a 1780 report of Congress.  

Whatever the nature of the evidence presented in the 1779 petition for her relief, it was apparently compelling because less than a week later, Congress resolved to award her a soldier's half pay and a suit of clothes, the latter benefit being extended for life the very next year by another resolution of Congress.  In so doing, Congress expressed the belief that

" As she had the fortitude and virtue enough to supply the place of her husband after his fall in the service of his country, and in the execution of that task received the dangerous wound under which she now labors, the board  can but consider her as entitled to the same grateful return which would be made to a soldier in circumstances equally unfortunate."

It is a laudable recognition by a body neither known for its charity nor for speed in execution, and so I am lead to conclude two things further about Margaret Corbin and her military pension:

1.  It was essential to her case that she stepped into the role of her fallen husband, and therefore that she actually have a husband in the unit where she was a camp follower, and

2.  She must have had a powerful patron acting on her behalf who could navigate the bureaucratic tangle of state and congressional government and command attention be paid to her welfare.

Until I am confronted with primary source evidence both of her marriage to John Corbin and his service in a military unit that fought at Fort Washington, I have to consider an alternative hypothesis: that Margaret Corbin was a woman of the regiment without a husband, and that one was conveniently produced for her in suitably martyred form to support her pension claim.

As for the patron, I believe his name is known and the evidence is there in the historic record.  We will talk about him in a subsequent post.

Saying It Doesn't Make It So: On the Trail of John Corbin's Military Service in the Revolution

In yesterday's post I opened the proverbial can of worms when I questioned whether a central part of story   of Margaret Corbin, heroine of the Battle of Fort Washington, is supported by contemporary evidence. I have searched in vain through the available data on-line and have failed to discover any verifiable documentation of the revolutionary service of her husband, John Corbin, whom she is meant to have followed to war and replaced at the guns when he fell during the battle and subsequent capture of Fort Washington on November 16th, 1776. 

There are a number of possible explanations.  John Corbin's name could have been spelled differently on the muster rolls: as "Corbett", for example.   His name could have been on a missing muster roll.  It may be somewhere in a database that is not available to searchers on-line.  Or he may not have been there at all.

I am disturbed that the unit histories I have found for the outfit to which John Corbin supposedly belonged - Proctor's 1st Company (later 1st Battalion) Pennsylvania Artillery - make no mention of its participation in this fight or even presence in New York at this time. One description of service states:

"The company, having reenlisted October 30th, 1776, remained at Fort Island until about December 25th, when a portion were ordered to New Jersey and took part in the capture of the Hessians at Trenton, also at the Battle of Princeton when Major [Thomas] Proctor captured a brass six-pounder."

Fort Island (later Fort Mifflin) was located below the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia.  It is hard to imagine this company dashing north just after its reenlistment, only to be captured at Fort Washinton barely a fortnight later, and then being on hand for Trenton six weeks after that. On the other hand, what are we to make of this tantalizing entry in the Historical Register of the Officers of the Continental Army for Francis Proctor, who was the father of Thomas Proctor, the first Captain of the 1st Company Pennsylvania Artillery and the same Major Proctor mentioned above?

"Proctor, Francis (PA) Lieutenant 1st Pennsylvania Artillery Company. October 27th, 1775; was a prisoner in 1776, when and where taken not stated."

Part of Proctor's Artillery Battalion was captured in April 1777 at Bound Brook, so perhaps this is when Francis Proctor was taken and not 1776.  Or maybe he really was there, with some of his men and at least one woman: Margaret Corbin.  That is the way that history has remembered it, in a story that has been repeated as fact since at least 1877, when Edward F. DeLancy wrote with characteristic Victorian sentimentality:

"There were instances on both sides in this action of humor and gaiety, as well as of intrepidity and valor, in the midst of danger. One instance of the latter must be mentioned, which has rarely been equaled or surpassed. In one of the Pennsylvania regiments was a soldier named Corbin, who was accompanied by his wife. His post was at one of the guns in the battery on the hill attacked by the Hessians, where the battle raged hardest, hottest, and longest ; for it was between two and three hours before the Germans succeeded in carrying that position. In the midst of the fight Corbin, struck by a ball, fell dead at his wife s feet as she was
aiding him in his duties. Instantly, without a word, she stepped into his place and worked the gun with redoubled skill and vigor, fighting bravely till she sank to the earth, pierced by three grapeshot in the shoulder. Though terribly wounded, she .finally recovered, but was disabled for life. A soldier's half-pay and the value of a soldier's suit of clothes, annually voted her by the Continental Congress while John Jay presided, was all the reward that the first woman who fought for American liberty ever received for such heroic love, courage, and suffering.

Thirty-two years afterward Spain's glowing, dark-eyed daughter, erect in the deadly breach, fiercely defending her native city against the French invader, and hurling vengeance on the slayers of her lover dead at her feet, burst upon the world never to be forgotten. The deed of Augustina of Aragon, the Maid of Zaragoza, was not nobler, truer, braver than that of Margaret Corbin of Pennsylvania. Byron's immortal lines are as true of the one as of the other :

'Her lover sinks, she sheds no ill timed tear,
Her chief is slain, she fills his fatal post;
The foe retires, she heads the sallying host:
Who can appease, like her, a lover's ghost?'"

Is this the basis for the claim that Corbin's (here unnamed) husband was a Pennsylvania soldier?  We know that the Pennsylvania Supreme Council granted her $30 on June 29th, 1779 "to relieve her present necessities", and are told that Congress subsequently acted on the recommendation that she indeed be awarded half pay and a suit of clothes annually.  Margaret Corbin was taken to Philadelphia after her wounding and is said to have been born in Pennsylvania.  She was apparently kept on the roles the Invalid Regiment of Pennsylvania through 1783.  We know she later received a full United States soldier's pension, complete with rum rations.  The evidence for her service and wounding in battle while defending and outerwork of Fort Washington is strong.  The evidence that she had a husband there named John Corbin is not. 

And there may be more at work here as well.  We will pick up the story of how "Captain Molly" got her pension in a subsequent post.

Whither John Corbin, Missing Matross?

This is not the piece I originally set out to write.  I had intended to launch into the truly inspirational tale of the original "Molly Pitcher" - Margaret Cochran Corbin.  Her exploits preceded those of her legendary namesake by more than a year, and earned her the first pension ever awarded to an American woman for heroic military service.  She certainly seems to deserve that recognition, reportedly having been terribly wounded serving a field piece in the defense of Fort Washington on November 16th, 1776. 

Nevertheless, as "trust but verify" is as much a watchword of the historian as for Reagan-era nuclear deterrence, I find myself unable to write about this patriot heroine without first trying to confirm a critical part of her story where I have encountered a puzzling and unexpected discrepancy.

Margaret Cochran is said to have been the wife of John Corbin - described as a Virginian who served in the Pennsylvania Artillery - and to have accompanied him in the field.  Most of the histories of her exploits (see various examples here, here, and here) assign John Corbin to Proctor's 1st Company of Pennsylvania Artillery, which was organized in 1775 and latter expanded as the Pennsylvania Artillery battalion. The problem is that this unit seems to have played no part whatsoever in the defense and retreat across Manhattan in 1776, but was stationed at Fort Island in the Delaware River and first engaged in the attack on Trenton.  Furthermore, I can find no record in on-line sources of the service of a John Corbin in any artillery unit during the war.

A general description of the American order of battle at Fort Washington says that the artillery consisted of "about 100 men, under Captain Pierce"  If true, the only candidate for the commander of these men would have been Captain Thomas Pierce of Massachusetts, who lead one of the companies in Henry Knox's Continental artillery regiment during this period.  While is is not known how many cannon were used during the battle, one account states the British captured 47 "ordnance of all sizes", of which one historian speculates "much less than one-half were mounted in the fort." Captain Johann Ewald of the Hessian Jagers puts the number at 43, ranging from 32-pounders to  howitzers.

The Captain Pierce who was present at this battle was posted at the small earthen redan on Forest Hill: the only outwork of Fort Washington.  It is here that Margaret Corbin is said to have fought and been wounded. Mark M. Boatner III's Encyclopedia of the American Revolution (p. 386)  says that there were three cannon placed at this position. This area was defended by the 250 men of Stephenson's Virginia and Maryland Rifle battalion, commanded since the death of its Colonel that fall by Lieutenant-Colonel Moses Rawlings.  They had only recently been sent to reinforce the Fort Washington garrison.  I can find no record of the service of John Corbin in this unit. 

There may have been some Pennsylvania troops here as well.  An entry for November 1, 1776 in the American commander's orderly book states: "Capt. Long's Company to join Coll. Rawlings Battn".  I have not yet been able to positively identify this officer, but there was a Lt. Hugh Long in Joseph Hart's Pennsylvania Battalion of the Flying Camp, and some of the officers of this unit are listed as captured at Fort Washington.

If John Corbin served the guns at Forest Hill, he could have done so as a "matross", an infantryman who ranked as a private of artillery and was assigned to assist the gunners.  Some of the histories declare that he was indeed a matross in Proctor's Artillery, though again there is no record available on-line to confirm this service in any unit.  He might have been a regular infantryman who later stepped up to serve the cannon, with Margaret Corbin replacing him as he fell, in keeping with the legend. 

Perhaps John Corbin really was one of the 54 (some say 59) Americans who died in the fight.  I do not make the absolute claim that it didn't happen the way that history remembers it. It is just that I haven't found convincing proof that it did, and instead have unearthed inconsistencies in the story that make me wonder what else may have been repeated as fact without a primary source to confirm it.  We will explore some of these in subsequent posts in this series.