Connecticut has a deep history with the Revolutionary War. Plenty of tales detail battles and bloodshed between colonial men and their British enemies, but what about the women?
WSHU’s Molly Ingram spoke to Dr. Kathy Hermes, the publisher of Connecticut Explored Magazine and professor Emerita of American history at Central Connecticut State University, to hear more about women's roles in the American Revolution for Women’s History Month.
WSHU: In typical recounts of the Revolutionary War, you hear a lot about what men contributed. You don't hear too much about women. But you've explored how women actually had a lot to do with winning the war. What did you find?
KH: So one of the things I found is that a lot of times when people tell the story of the American Revolution, women get a few sentences; they did homespun clothing, they boycotted tea, and then there's very little elaboration on those things. But what I found was that creating the homespun clothing was actually part of a movement, and the boycotts and activities around food and food riots that occurred, for example, in East Hartford, were part of acting out revolutionary ideals.
And so when you look at women in the American Revolution, what you're finding is that Patriot women, whether they were white, Black or Indigenous, believed in the same ideals espoused by male revolutionaries. They contributed economically to the war effort by producing uniforms and clothing for the army. They operated farms and urban businesses as deputy husbands while men were away fighting. You had female camp followers attached to the Continental Army from 1777 to 1783, and they made up about 3% of the size of the regular army.
WSHU: If you look at earlier wars, was this common? Or were women being involved in this way progressive for its time?
KH: I definitely think it was unusual. Women, of course, were always camp followers in war and continued to be after the Revolutionary War because there was always a need for the services that they provided. But I think in terms of taking on the mantle of republicanism and trying to put that into action, it was something very different.
WSHU: One of the stories you explore is that of Judith Lines. Can you talk a little bit about her? And as you said, some people may be surprised to know that there were women of many races and ethnicities contributing to the war efforts.
KH: Yeah, Judith has an incredible story. She was born Judith Phillips in 1756 to Mary, a free black woman, and Samuel Phillips, an Indigenous man. We don't know what tribe he belonged to. And then, she married a man named James Jeffords, but her husband was actually killed in the Revolutionary War. And then she married a man named John Lines and followed him into the war, into the highlands.
She was at the Battle of the Highlands, where she was a laundress and her husband was a waiter for Colonel Sherman, and while she was at the highlands, she actually contracted smallpox, and she stayed there for about three or four months. But after the smallpox, she had to retire, basically. But there's an interesting story surrounding Judith: when she applied for a pension, one of the deponents named Ruben Peck recalled that George Washington tried to prevail upon Judith to go with him to Virginia and to work for him at Mount Vernon, and he also offered her husband John, a position at Mount Vernon. Had Judith agreed to this offer, she would have clearly been in a position of authority, but probably over an enslaved household staff.
Judith and John were both literate. He wrote letters to her, and they're really some of the earliest letters from an African American man that exist. She later became a landowner with her husband, John. And she declined [Washington’s offer]. We don't know her thinking behind declining it, but it's possible that she did not want to go south into a slave-holding society and was very wary of that. But it's an interesting story to think that he noticed her skills and invited her to join him at Mount Vernon.
After the war, she and John moved to Vermont, and she even left a will. So, you know, this was a woman who accomplished a lot in her life. She applied for a pension when her husband died, and he had been collecting a pension after the war. And so she was somebody who had a very active life, became a property holder, and like many women after the revolution, pursued opportunities with her husband that probably wouldn't have been available to them had he not been a soldier in the war, like, for example, migrating to Vermont.
WSHU: How did women's roles in the war change how they were viewed in society after it was finished?
KH: So one of the things that really changed in the period of the early republic, so after the war was over, is that women were then faced with raising sons and daughters to be active participants in a very new kind of government. Many people don't think about this, but when the colonists were under the monarchy, they were subjects, and once they became free of the monarchy, they were citizens. And that's a very different kind of position. The Citizen has all kinds of rights and responsibilities that he or she has to carry out. For women in this period, the idea of Republican motherhood took hold, and that idea was that a woman's place was still in the home and in the private sphere to a large extent, but her job was to educate her children about the ideals of the Republic and to raise them as virtuous people. And virtue had a really specific meaning. The word virtue actually comes from the Latin we're Vir, which is a word for man or manliness. And so virtue was considered to be a manly thing, but in this Republican motherhood ideology, it becomes transformed, and women become the moral arbiters of the revolution.
WSHU: You'll be talking more about women's roles in the Revolutionary War later this month in New Haven. What can people expect to hear?
KH: So we're going to hear about how women could become, in essence, deputy husbands. A woman like Hannah Bunce Watson, for example, took over the Hartford Courant after her husband died, and for two years, published probably the most revolutionary content that was being published in America, and certainly the most revolutionary published by the Courant. We'll hear about a woman from New London who allegedly took up arms and fired upon Benedict Arnold. We'll also hear about women of different backgrounds who, although they led very ordinary lives, contributed an enormous amount to the revolution through clothing. For example, Hartford had a quota where they had to deliver 1600 vests and 1000 coats to the Continental Army in just one year.
Dr. Kathy Hermes will present “Working for the Revolution: Connecticut’s Patriot Women” at the New Haven Museum, on Wednesday, March 19, 2025, at 6 p.m. Register for the free NH250 event here.
