Women Following Washington's Army: Fact Sheet

The following are facts about the women who followed the Continental Army. These facts will help you determine if your hypotheses are correct or incorrect. Read each fact and decide if it supports or refutes each hypothesis.

FACT 1: The American Revolution was the last of the group of wars categorized as the "early modern wars" (wars that occurred between the 1500s and 1700s). In all of these wars, thousands of women, with their children, followed the armies – functioning as nurses, laundresses, and cooks.

FACT 2: The British army, upon which Washington's army modeled itself to a large extent, always had its allocation of women. These women were usually the soldiers' wives and occasionally their mothers.

FACT 3: Some single women attached themselves to the troops and followed the armies because they had fallen in love and become impregnated by soldiers whom they had met while the army was stationed near their homes.

FACT 4: Some of the wives of wealthy soldiers came for a taste of adventure. Generals' wives, such as Martha Washington and Catherine Greene, spent the winters at Valley Forge and Morristown with their husbands.

FACT 5: Most of the approximately 200,000 women who followed the army were impoverished. They were, for the most part, wives and children of the soldiers, and they could not support themselves while their husbands and fathers were drawn into the service.

FACT 6: The administration of the Continental Army was notoriously bad. The office of the quartermaster (administrator responsible for supplying the food, clothing, and equipment) was run poorly. Hospital and nursing services were marginal at best.

FACT 7: The women who followed the army processed and cooked most of the food for the soldiers. They also did most of the necessary cleaning. Molly Pitcher, one of the most famous women who followed Washington's army, and many other American women made themselves useful by hauling water for teams that fired cannons, and bringing food to men under fire.

FACT 8: "Even the most respectable women represented something of a moral challenge; by embodying an alternate loyalty to family or lover, they could discourage reenlistment or even encourage desertion in order to respond to private emotional claims. They were a steady reminder to men of a world other than the controlled one of the camp; desertion was high throughout the war and no general needed anyone who might encourage it further."¹

FACT 9: Washington was constantly issuing contradictory orders regarding the women who followed his army. Sometimes he ordered the women to get into the wagons and ride so as not to slow down the troops. At other times he ordered them to walk so as not to take up valuable space in the wagons.

FACT 10: Women who followed the army had to be fed. Washington had to supply these women with full rations and their children with half-rations, in the midst of inadequate supplies of food even to feed the soldiers.

FACT 11: Women who followed the army were not orderly, disciplined, or professional. They could not be controlled by the usual military devices. They were often accused of theft and spying for the enemy.

FACT 12: "Great numbers of women, who seem to be the beasts of burden, having a bushel basket on their back, by which they were bent double, the contents seem to be Pots and Kettles, various sorts of Furniture, children peeping thro' gridirons and other utensils, some very young Infants who were born on the road, the women bare feet, cloathed in dirty raggs, such effluvia filled the air while they were passing, had they not been smoaking all the time, I should have been apprehensive of being contaminated by them."²

FACT 13: A woman who cooked for Washington and his troops and even brought them food when they were under fire was quoted as saying "it would not do for men to fight and starve too."³

FACT 14: Washington expressed his shock at the appearance of his soldiers at Bunker Hill who, because they thought that washing clothes was women's work, "wore what they had until it crusted over and fell apart."⁴

FACT 15: ". . . American [men], not being used to doing things of this sort, choose rather to let their linen etc. rot upon their backs than to be at the trouble of cleanin' 'em themselves."⁵

Excerpted from Ready-to-Use Multicultural Activities for the American History Classroom .

1. Peter J. Albert and Ronald Hoffman, (eds) Women in the Age of the American Revolution (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1989), p. 14.
2. Ibid. p. 15.
3. Ibid. p. 16.
4. Ibid. p. 15.
5. Ibid.
   
   

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