The Widow Whose House Became Headquarters

My husband had been dead eleven days when General Washington arrived in Morristown. Colonel Jacob Ford, my husband, died of the pneumonia on the eleventh of January, 1777, having served his country in the militia and worn out his health in the doing of it. He left me four children and a house that had been the pride of Morris County — a fine house, well built, with good rooms and a proper kitchen and everything a family could want.

The General needed a headquarters. His officers looked at the houses in Morristown and determined that mine was the most suitable — large enough for a commanding general, his staff, his servants, and the constant traffic of military business. I was informed, not asked. A widow with four children does not refuse a commanding general in wartime. I do not say this with bitterness, only with the clarity that comes from understanding one's position.

I was given two rooms. Two rooms in my own house, for myself and my children. The rest — the parlors, the dining room, the bedrooms upstairs — were taken over by the General and his people. His aides-de-camp worked at tables in my dining room. Officers came and went at all hours. Sentries stood at my doors. The noise, the mud tracked through the hallways, the wear on the carpets and the furniture — these were constant irritations, small in themselves but accumulating into a weight that pressed upon me daily.

I do not wish to speak ill of General Washington. He was courteous in his manner and correct in his dealings with me. Mrs. Washington, when she arrived, was kind and made efforts to include me in conversation. But courtesy does not restore a house to its owner, and kindness does not pay for the wood burned in fireplaces that served military purposes rather than family ones.

The truth that no one speaks of is this: the Revolution was fought, in part, on the backs of women like me. Women who kept farms running while their husbands marched. Women who fed soldiers from their own stores and received promissory notes in return — notes that depreciated to nothing before the ink was dry. Women who gave up their homes, their privacy, their peace, and received neither thanks nor compensation.

I kept my house. I kept my children fed. I kept the Ford name respected in Morristown. These are not the things that histories record, but they are the things that mattered, and they were accomplished at a cost that only those who bore it can understand.

After the army left, I found that the house required extensive repairs. The garden had been trampled, the fences torn down for firewood by soldiers who cared nothing for property that was not their own. I applied to the government for compensation and received, eventually, a fraction of what was owed. This, too, is the Revolution as it was actually lived — not a story of glory but of sacrifice demanded and inadequately repaid.