CAMP FOLLOWERS: WAR AND WOMEN

In the eighteenth century civilians, both men and women, who traveled with the military were called camp followers. Camp followers included civilians in official, paid support roles for the military, soldiers' families, and civilians who independently sold goods and services to individual soldiers. There are no statistics on camp followers for the colonial wars, but about 20,000 women had paid positions with the American troops at some point during the American Revolution. British, Hessian, and Loyalist troops add from 3,000 to 5,000 more women to the total. Around 2,000 women traveled with Burgoyne's 7,200 troops on the 1777 invasion of New York. Two years later, 1,200 civilians, mostly wives and children, marched with John Sullivan's army from Pennsylvania into New York. In addition, an undetermined number of Indian women traveled with Indian allies to the American and British armies.

women at war

During the course of a war, women slipped in and out of the different forms of camp following. A wife might take a paid position and then, if she was widowed, stay with the army. The army subjected all who traveled with them to special regulations, military discipline, and military courts. At times the army subjected women to embarrassing medical examinations for venereal disease.

Whereas the British simply accepted that an army would have camp followers and regulated the numbers who accompanied troops to America, American leaders were ambivalent about women camp followers. Washington thought they made the army look disorderly on march and slowed marches, but he also knew their presence kept men from deserting. As the war progressed, American commanders began enrolling women and children and issuing them partial rations. Officials who were struggling to keep troops from going hungry resented the extra mouths they now had to feed.

"Women of the regiment" were paid for work now done by troops with rank (engineers, cooks, supply, commissaries, laundry workers, nurses). They marched with the army on campaigns when other camp followers were ordered to stay at the base camps. The British army used a ratio of one paid woman's position for every ten enlisted men. Americans had about one woman for every fifteen men. Women cooked, did laundry, and hauled water to cool artillery.

Women of the regiment could find themselves under fire in battle. In one case, Loyalist John Simcoe scattered women and baggage among his encamped troops so Virginians would overestimate the size of his forces. Women bringing water sometimes were pressed into service on the guns, as happened to Mary Hays (the probable model for the Molly Pitcher story). It was reported that only four of the fifty-four women who were marching with General Braddock in 1755 survived the surprise attack by French and Indians.

The Americans had trouble recruiting the required one matron and ten nurses for every hundred wounded Revolutionary soldiers, despite offering higher pay than for other jobs because disease killed many nurses. Americans sometimes forced women to serve as nurses by threatening to cut off their rations as wives. The best account we have of the trials of an eighteenth-century army nurse is a journal kept by Charlotte Brown from 1754–1757 while serving as matron of the British hospitals during the French and Indian War.

MOLLY PITCHER

Historians do not agree on the true identity of Molly Pitcher, or even if she was an individual or a name given generally to women camp followers. One true-life Molly is legendary for her participation in the Battle of Monmouth during the American Revolutionary War. Although many people long believed her to be Mary Ludwig, born in Trenton, New Jersey, her true identity seems to be that of another Mary whose maiden name remains unknown. The latter Mary wed William Hays, who was a barber in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. In 1777 he joined the Continental Army, and his Mary Hays, nicknamed Molly, came with him to the winter encampment, like other wives who prepared meals, washed clothes, and tended the ill.

Yet when spring came and other wives left, Molly marched with the Continental Army toward the colony of New Jersey. There, on a hot and humid June 28, 1778 the army engaged British forces at the Battle of Monmouth, in the town of Freehold, Monmouth County. Although the American soldiers shed unneeded clothing to cool themselves, they suffered greatly from the heat. Molly, who carried a pitcher among her supplies, realized that she could help by bringing water from a nearby spring. During this decisive battle, Molly, dodging bullets, brought pitcher after pitcher of water to the men who had collapsed from the heat. Over the noise of battle rang cries of "Molly—Pitcher!"

William Hays was firing a canon when Molly saw him collapse. After quickly determining that William's wound was not fatal, she took over loading the canon, ramming the metal balls into the barrel with a ramrod. Molly was in the thick of battle when General George Washington spied her, with her skirt and petticoat ripped by a musket ball. That evening after the battle was over, General Washington asked to speak with Molly. He granted her a field commission as a sergeant in the Continental Army.

By war's end William and Mary Hays had returned to Carlisle and Mary had resumed her former life as a servant. After William Hays died, Mary later remarried, becoming Mary Hays McCauly, and it is known from state records that in 1822 the Pennsylvania Legislature granted her a pension for her military activities. Mary Hays McCauly was buried in Carlisle in 1832, where her grave is noted by a monument on which the following poem by Sarah Woods Parkinson was engraved:

O'er Monmouth's field of carnage drear,
With cooling drink and words of cheer
A woman passed who knew no fear,
The wife of Hays, the gunner.
With ramrod from her husband's hand,
Beside his gun she took her stand
And helped to wrest our well-loved land,
From England's tyrant King.
From the ranks this woman came,
By the cannon won her fame '
Tis true she could not write her name,
But freedom's hand hath carved it.
Shall we then criticize her ways,
Nay, rather give her well earned praise
Then doff our caps and voices raise,
In cheers for Molly Pitcher.

Whether an individual or a collective persona, Molly Pitcher's courage is commemorated today by the U.S. Field Artillery Association at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, which awards the medal Artillery Order of Molly Pitcher to a field artillery commander who has "voluntarily contributed in a significant way to the improvement of the field artillery community."

Although women of all social classes might travel with the military, elite women lived in relative comfort. Baroness Fredericka von Riedesel and her daughters rode in a coach while following her husband, the top Hessian

officer with General Burgoyne in 1777. As prisoners of war, the Riedesels rented a comfortable Virginia plantation. Martha and George Washington spent the winter at Valley Forge in a comfortable farmhouse entertaining staff officers generously. The 400 women on the ration rolls at Valley Forge in December 1777 drew from the same meager supplies as the ordinary soldiers and struggled to find shelter. These women were expected to walk when the army moved, although many rode on supply wagons, contrary to orders.

Many women were among the multiracial swarm of peddlers, refugees, settlers, and laborers who followed an army. The civilian camp followers provided goods and services that the army was unable to supply. Contrary to the popular image, few were prostitutes, but some were in unrecognized marriages. The British army required soldiers to get permission to marry and limited the number of married men in each regiment. Slaves seeking freedom escaped to British lines, and refugees sought protection with the armies of both sides.

The constant comings and goings of camp followers disrupted military order and provided cover to enterprising spies. One woman set up her shop in front of Washington's headquarters tent in August and September 1778 and then reported the command conversations to the British.

after the revolution

After the war, impoverished veterans and their wives petitioned for pensions. Sarah Osborne documented her camp following experience while trying to prove her husband's service. Several wives applied for pensions in their own right, including Anna Maria Lane and Margaret Corbin, both wounded in battle. As Americans embraced the idea that women's true nature was domestic, however, they forgot women's active roles in war.

The army eliminated most paid positions for women after 1804. Increasingly the army used enlisted men and officers to staff support units. In the Civil War women had to create voluntary organization such as the Sanitary Commission to offer nursing services. By World War I women could enlist as nurses and worked in support roles through organizations such as the Red Cross.

Because the army had incorporated support roles into the ranks, in World War II each branch of the service created women's auxiliaries to free men for battle. These became women's service branches after the war, then eventually integrated women into all service branches. Only reluctantly have any combat positions been opened to women. Families continue to follow soldiers, living on or near all major military bases, but unlike eighteenth-century camp followers, they do not go on active maneuvers. Throughout the centuries wars have brought new and expanded roles for women, in the process transforming American society and culture.

bibliography

Anderson, Fred. The Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766. New York: Knopf, 2000.

Dann, John C. The Revolution Remembered: Eyewitness Accounts of the War for Independence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.

Deakin, Carol. "Support Personnel: Women with General Braddock's Forces." Proceedings of Northern Virginia Studies Conference (1984): 85–94.

DePauw, Linda Grant. "Women in Combat: The Revolutionary War Experience." Armed Forces and Society 7 (1981): 209–226.

Kerber, Linda Grant. " 'History Can Do It No Justice': Women and the Reinterpretation of the American Revolution." In Women in the Age of the American Revolution, edited by Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1989.

Gundersen, Joan R. "To Be Useful to the World": Women in Revolutionary America, 1740–1790. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996.

Mayer, Holly A. Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community during the American Revolution. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996.

Norton, Mary Beth. "Eighteenth-Century American Women in Peace and War: The Case of the Loyalists." William and Mary Quarterly 3d series, 33 (1976): 386–409.

Tharp, Louise Hall. The Baroness and the General. Boston: Little, Brown, 1962.

Joan R. Gundersen

See also:Brown, Charlotte: Diary of a Nurse; Families at War; Sampson, Deborah.