Molly Pitcher, Mary Hays of Carlisle

The woman buried in the Old Graveyard here in Carlisle may or may not be Molly Pitcher. Historians have been arguing about it for almost two hundred years, which is part of what makes her worth knowing about.

Mary Ludwig Hays was born near Trenton, New Jersey in seventeen fifty-four. She married a barber named William Hays, who enlisted in the Continental Army and served with the Fourth Continental Artillery. Mary followed the army, as many soldiers' wives did, performing the essential labor that kept military camps functioning: cooking, washing, nursing. On June twenty-eighth, seventeen seventy-eight, she was at the Battle of Monmouth in New Jersey during one of the hottest days of the year.

The legend holds that Mary carried water to the sweating gunners, earning the nickname Molly Pitcher. When her husband collapsed at the cannon, she stepped in and worked the gun herself for the rest of the battle. General Washington supposedly noticed her and issued her a warrant as a noncommissioned officer. Soldiers called her Sergeant Molly.

The problems: documentation is thin. Eyewitness accounts from Monmouth mention a woman at a cannon but are vague on her identity. Historians now believe Molly Pitcher may be a composite of several women who served in similar roles during the Revolution, with Mary Hays as the primary candidate but not the only one.

What is documented is the aftermath. Mary settled in Carlisle after the war, apparently with a second husband named John McCauley. She spent decades here, working as a domestic servant. In eighteen twenty-two, Pennsylvania awarded her an annual pension of forty dollars for services she rendered during the Revolutionary War. She died in Carlisle in eighteen thirty-two.

The grave in the Old Graveyard is real. Whether the legend is wholly true is another matter. In American history, those two things often coexist.