Margaret Cochran Corbin
Pennsylvania
About a mile and a half northwest of here, on November twelfth, seventeen fifty-one, Margaret Cochran was born near Rocky Spring. She grew up to become one of the most remarkable soldiers of the Revolution. When her husband John Corbin was killed at the guns during the British assault on Fort Washington in New York on November sixteenth, seventeen seventy-six, Margaret stepped forward and took his place at the cannon.
She continued firing until she was severely wounded in the arm and chest. Congress granted her a pension in seventeen seventy-nine, making her one of the first women to receive a military pension in American history. She died in eighteen hundred and is buried at West Point.
