04/02/2023
Margaret Cochran Corbin was born in 1751 on the Pennsylvania frontier. When she was five, French allied Indians attacked her home. Her father was killed, and her mother was taken captive. Margaret and her brother weren’t home, possibly already with the uncle who would then raise the two orphans. Margaret married a farmer, John Corbin, when she was twenty-one. She might have lived out the rest of her life as a typical frontier housewife except for the coming of the American Revolution.
John joined an artillery regiment in 1775 and Margaret went with him. Being the wife of an artilleryman, she would have been called upon to keep water in the sponge buckets used to extinguish burning material still in the cannon barrel. She might also have been employed in helping to haul artillery tools to the gun and other similar tasks. Spending so much time around the guns, it is natural she would have picked up basic knowledge concerning the different jobs carried out to load and fire them.
In November 1776, John Corbin’s artillery company manned part of the outer works defending Fort Washington on Manhattan Island, near New York City. On November 16, Hessian troops stormed the works at Fort Washington, and John was killed. Instead of giving in to grief, Margaret took her husband’s position at the gun and helped keep it firing. Eventually, every member of the gun crew was killed or wounded. Margaret was felled by a blast of cannister shot that struck her chest, jaw and nearly destroyed her left arm. The fort surrendered and Margaret was released to the Americans along with some of the other wounded.
With little to no use of her left arm. It is unknown how Margaret managed life up until 1779, when the State of Pennsylvania granted her $30 dollars and referred her case to the Continental Board of War. Impressed with her service the board resolved that ”as she had the fortitude and virtue enough to supply the place of her husband…and in the ex*****on 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.” Margaret was to receive a lifetime pension and a yearly stipend for new clothes. Not quite the same “grateful return” mentioned though, as she was granted only half the monthly pay that a man would receive. Still and all, Margaret was the first Revolutionary War soldier to receive a military pension, along with being the first woman in the service to receive a military pension. Margaret was assigned to the Corps of Invalids, soldiers who helped to garrison forts and do support work for the army. She even had the distinction of being able to draw the soldier’s rum ration. Margaret earned the nickname “Captain Molly” for her service.
Margaret was eventually sent to West Point, discharged from the army in 1783, and remained in the West Point area the rest of her life. She was under the charge of the commissary of stores, who in 1786 complained to Secretary of War Henry Knox “I am at loss what to do with Capt Molly…She is first an offensive person that people are unwilling to take her in charge . . . and I cannot find any that is willing to keep her.” Local records indicate her neighbors described “Captain Molly” as a rough, disagreeable woman who kept to herself, was drunk and surly and could not keep normal hygiene due to her disabilities. It is said that she preferred the company of her fellow veterans as opposed to other women. This is not surprising as only fellow soldiers would truly understand what she had experienced and the levels of pain she labored under.
Margaret died in Highland Falls in 1800, at the age of 48, and was buried in the area. In 1925, the Daughters of the American Revolution attempted to find her grave, with the intent of having her reinterred in the cemetery at West Point and a monument dedicated to her. A gravesite believed by locals to be hers was identified and medical staff from West Point positively identified the remains. The monument was dedicated in April of 1926, marking both the 150th anniversary of American Independence and the Battle of Fort Washington, where Margaret was wounded.
In 2017, expansion work on the cemetery accidentally disturbed Margaret’s burial site. The remains were removed, and a new analysis was done, wherein it was discovered that the remains were actually that of a middle-aged man and not Margaret’s. While the true location of Margaret’s final resting spot remains unknown, her monument still stands in the West Point Cemetery as a tribute to her service. Cadets still learn of the dedication to duty and willingness to sacrifice that Margaret displayed throughout her life as the United States Army’s very first female soldier.
