Jan 14, 2018 3 min read

While many women served in supporting roles during the American Revolution – mostly as nurses and cooks, but occasionally as messengers and even spies – one woman, Margaret Corbin, served as a soldier. When her husband John enlisted in the First Company of Pennsylvania Artillery, she traveled with him, even into battle. And so she was with him in November 1776 when John’s company was part of a garrison stationed at Fort Washington in northern Manhattan, charged with protecting Gen. George Washington and his Continental Army’s (ultimately successful) retreat from Manhattan to White Plains, N.Y.

During that retreat, the British attacked Fort Washington, and John was killed while firing his cannon at Hessian soldiers (Hessians were German mercenaries in the British Army). Upon his death, Margaret, who had never trained on the cannon, but had observed her husband in action, took over firing until she was disabled by wounds to her arm, chest and lower jaw.

The Americans were eventually forced to surrender Fort Washington. Margaret was taken prisoner, but later released and paroled under a “wounded soldier” classification. She then went to Philadelphia, where she struggled to adapt to – but never fully recovered from – her war wounds. Her plight came to the attention of Pennsylvania’s Executive Council, which paid some of her medical expenses, but in July 1799 the Board of War, an organization created by Congress, learned of her heroism and awarded her a military pension that was one half of what a regular soldier in the Continental Army received, making her the first woman in American history to receive a military pension.

Margaret Corbin was officially discharged from the Continental Army in 1783. She died this week in 1800 and was buried in Highland Falls, N.Y. She was just 48 years-old. Today, at Fort Tryon Park in New York City, which in 1776 was where Margaret Corbin took over her husband’s cannon, there is a plaque honoring her service, and “Margaret Corbin Circle” is just outside of the park’s main entrance. “Margaret Corbin Drive” connects the park to the Henry Hudson Parkway.

In 1926, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) successfully petitioned to have Margaret Corbin buried with full military honors at the cemetery of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Her grave in Highland Falls was located and her body exhumed, with her identity verified by a doctor’s postmortem examination of the damage done to her arm, chest and jaw during the battle of Fort Washington.

At her West Point gravesite behind West Point’s Old Cadet Chapel is the Margaret Corbin Monument, erected by DAR. Today Margaret Corbin is one of only two Revolutionary War soldiers buried there.