Margaret Corbin: The First Woman to Earn an American Military Pension

Born on November 12, 1751, in the rugged frontier of Franklin County, Pennsylvania, Margaret Cochran knew hardship long before the Revolution brought its own brand of suffering. When she was just five years old, a Native American raid shattered her family — her father was killed, her mother taken captive and never seen again. Margaret and her brother were raised by an uncle, growing up in a world where violence and loss were not abstractions but lived realities. In 1772, she married John Corbin, a Virginia farmer, and for a few years the couple lived a modest, quiet life. But when war came in 1775, John enlisted in the 1st Company of Pennsylvania Artillery, and Margaret made the decision that thousands of women made during the Revolution: she followed him into the army. As a camp follower, she cooked, laundered, and nursed — unglamorous but essential work that kept the Continental Army functioning. She was not a soldier, not yet, but she had placed herself squarely inside the machinery of war, sharing its deprivations and dangers alongside the men who drilled and marched.

On November 16, 1776, the British launched a massive assault on Fort Washington, the last Continental stronghold on Manhattan Island. John Corbin was serving his cannon when enemy fire struck him down, killing him at his post. What Margaret did next was extraordinary but not, as history would later reveal, unique: she stepped to the gun, took up the rammer and sponge, and began loading and firing alongside what remained of the crew. She was not trained for this. She did it anyway. The cannon roared under her hands until British grapeshot tore into her body, shredding her left arm, ripping through her chest, and shattering her jaw. Her arm was nearly severed. The fort fell that same day, and Margaret was captured with the surviving garrison. Too badly wounded to be of any use as a prisoner, she was paroled — released back to the American side, broken and bleeding, to face a recovery that would never be complete. The wounds she sustained at Fort Washington left her permanently disabled, unable to use her left arm for the rest of her life.

The human cost of Margaret Corbin's courage was staggering and unrelenting. She had risked everything — not for rank, not for pay, but in a moment of raw instinct beside her dying husband's gun. The grapeshot that struck her did not simply wound her; it reshaped the entire remainder of her life. She could not work, could not provide for herself, and lived in poverty in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, dependent on whatever meager assistance she could find. In 1779, the Continental Congress took the unprecedented step of awarding her a lifetime soldier's half-pension — the first such pension ever granted to a woman in American history. The resolution's language was specific and unsparing: it recognized her for having "heroically filled the post of her husband" after his death in battle. This was not charity. It was acknowledgment that she had fought, bled, and been broken in service to her country, and that her sacrifice deserved the same recognition given to wounded men. Yet even with the pension, her final years were marked by pain and difficulty, her shattered body a daily reminder of what November 16, 1776, had cost her.

Margaret Corbin died around 1800, at approximately forty-eight years of age, and for more than a century her story faded into obscurity — sometimes confused with the Molly Pitcher legend associated with the Battle of Monmouth, sometimes forgotten altogether. In 1926, her remains were exhumed and reinterred with military honors at the West Point Cemetery, where a monument now marks her grave. Her significance, properly understood, extends far beyond a single dramatic moment at a cannon. Corbin's story is documented, verified, and anchored in the official records of the Continental Congress, making it one of the most concrete pieces of evidence we have that women participated in combat during the American Revolution. She was not a myth or a folk legend but a real woman whose pension records still exist. Her life challenges the persistent notion that women's contributions to the Revolution were limited to the domestic sphere, and it demands that we reckon honestly with the full range of people who fought and suffered to create the United States.

WHY MARGARET CORBIN MATTERS TO MONMOUTH

Margaret Corbin's service at Fort Washington in 1776 predates the Battle of Monmouth by nearly two years, but her story is essential to understanding what happened at Monmouth and why it matters. The Molly Pitcher legend — the iconic image of a woman firing a cannon at the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778 — does not exist in isolation. Corbin's documented case proves that women serving at artillery pieces was not a single romantic exception but a pattern repeated across the war. Her Congressional pension, the first ever awarded to a woman for military service, provides the kind of official verification that the Monmouth story, rooted more in oral tradition, largely lacks. Students and visitors who encounter Molly Pitcher at Monmouth should know Margaret Corbin's name, because her story transforms the legend from a charming anecdote into documented historical reality.

TIMELINE

• 1751: Born November 12 in Franklin County, Pennsylvania
• 1756: Father killed and mother captured in a Native American raid; Margaret and her brother raised by an uncle
• 1772: Married John Corbin, a Virginia farmer
• 1775: Accompanied John into the Continental Army when he enlisted in the 1st Company of Pennsylvania Artillery
• 1776: Took over her husband's cannon during the Battle of Fort Washington on November 16 after he was killed; severely wounded by grapeshot
• 1776: Captured by British forces and subsequently paroled due to the severity of her wounds
• 1779: Awarded a lifetime soldier's half-pension by the Continental Congress, becoming the first woman to receive a U.S. military pension
• c. 1800: Died in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, at approximately age 48
• 1926: Remains reinterred with military honors at the West Point Cemetery at West Point, New York

SOURCES

• Mayer, Holly A. Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community during the American Revolution. University of South Carolina Press, 1996.
• Hall, Edward Hagaman. Margaret Corbin: Heroine of the Battle of Fort Washington, 16 November 1776. American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, 1932.
• Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789. Volume XIV, 1779. Library of Congress. https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwjc.html
• National Park Service. "Margaret Corbin: A Rebirth of Remembrance." Fort Tryon Park / Fort Washington interpretive materials.
• Diamant, Lincoln. Revolutionary Women in the War for American Independence. Praeger, 1998.