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Elizabeth A.Sackler Center for Feminist Art

Molly Pitcher

Legendary

The general scholarly consensus is that Molly Pitcher is a legendary figure based on a composite of many different actual women who tended soldiers and fought alongside them in the American Revolutionary War (1775–83). One of these women, Mary Hays McCauley (circa 1753–1882), heroically took her fallen husband’s place at the cannon during the Battle of Monmouth in 1778, earning the nickname “Sergeant Molly.”