1751–1800

Margaret Corbin

Camp FollowerArtillery SoldierWar Heroine

Events in New York City

Biography

Margaret Corbin: The Woman Who Stepped to the Cannon

Born in 1751 on the raw edge of Pennsylvania's frontier, Margaret Cochran learned early that survival demanded courage. The colonial backcountry was a place of relentless danger, and when she was only a child, that danger came to her doorstep: her father was killed in a Native American raid and her mother was taken captive, never to return. Raised by an uncle in the wake of this shattering loss, Margaret grew into a woman already shaped by war long before the Revolution began. She married John Corbin, a Virginian who would serve as an artilleryman, and when he enlisted in the Continental Army, Margaret made the choice that thousands of women made during the conflict — she followed him. As a camp follower attached to the garrison defending the Hudson River highlands, she cooked, laundered, and nursed the sick and wounded, performing the unglamorous but essential labor that kept the Continental Army functioning. Her presence in camp was not unusual; what she would do on the battlefield was.

On November 16, 1776, British and Hessian forces launched a massive assault on Fort Washington, the last American stronghold on Manhattan Island. The attack converged from multiple directions on the elevated position at the island's northern tip, and the fighting that day was among the most desperate of the entire New York campaign. John Corbin was serving his cannon when enemy fire cut him down at his post. Without hesitation, Margaret stepped forward to take his place. Working alongside the surviving crew members, she loaded and fired the artillery piece as the British assault pressed closer. She was not a bystander performing a symbolic act — she was operating a weapon of war under direct enemy fire. She kept at the cannon until grapeshot tore into her body, shattering her left arm and lacerating her chest with wounds so grievous that she would never regain the use of her arm. The fort fell that same day, and the nearly three thousand soldiers of the garrison, along with Margaret herself, were taken prisoner by the British.

What Margaret Corbin risked at Fort Washington was everything — her life, her body, and whatever fragile security she possessed. She was not an officer with a commission or a politician with influence. She was a working woman on the margins of an army that could barely feed itself, and when the moment came, she chose to fight rather than flee. The cost was staggering. Her wounds left her permanently disabled, unable to perform the physical labor that had defined her role in camp and that would have sustained her after the war. She fought not for glory or recognition but out of an immediate, desperate loyalty — to her husband, to the men around her, and to the cause they shared. The fact that the Continental Congress recognized her sacrifice in 1779, granting her a lifetime pension and making her the first woman to receive such an award from the national government, speaks to how extraordinary her actions were judged even by the standards of her own time. The Executive Council of Pennsylvania had already provided her relief that same year, acknowledging what her broken body made plain.

Margaret Corbin spent her final years at the military installation at West Point, where soldiers knew her as "Captain Molly" — a nickname that carried both affection and respect. She died around 1800, and was buried on the grounds of West Point. In 1926, her remains were located and reinterred at the West Point Cemetery with full military honors, a gesture that formalized what her contemporaries had already understood: that her service was real, consequential, and worthy of remembrance. Her story matters today because it disrupts the comfortable notion that women's contributions to the Revolution were limited to the home front. Margaret Corbin loaded and fired a cannon in battle, was maimed by enemy fire, and was recognized by her government for it. She stands as evidence that the fight for American independence was sustained by people whose names were rarely recorded and whose sacrifices were easily forgotten. Her pension document remains one of the most remarkable records of the war — a nation acknowledging, in writing, that a woman had bled for its existence.

WHY MARGARET CORBIN MATTERS TO NEW YORK CITY

The Battle of Fort Washington was the last stand of the Continental Army on Manhattan Island, and its fall on November 16, 1776, marked one of the darkest moments of the entire Revolution for the American cause. Margaret Corbin was there, fighting and bleeding on ground that is now part of Fort Tryon Park in upper Manhattan. Her story connects visitors to a physical landscape where the war was not abstract but immediate — where a woman took up a cannon and was torn apart by grapeshot on a hilltop that still overlooks the Hudson River. For students of the Revolution, Corbin's experience reveals the full human cost of the New York campaign and the breadth of people who bore it.

TIMELINE

1751: Margaret Cochran is born on the Pennsylvania frontier.
c. 1756: Her father is killed and her mother captured in a Native American raid; Margaret is raised by an uncle.
c. 1772: Margaret marries John Corbin, who will serve as a Continental Army artilleryman.
1776: John Corbin enlists and joins the garrison at Fort Washington; Margaret accompanies him as a camp follower.
November 16, 1776: John Corbin is killed during the British assault on Fort Washington; Margaret takes over his cannon and is severely wounded by grapeshot.
November 16, 1776: Fort Washington falls; Margaret is captured along with the garrison.
1779: The Executive Council of Pennsylvania grants Margaret relief for her injuries and service.
July 6, 1779: The Continental Congress awards Margaret a lifetime military pension, making her the first woman to receive one from the national government.
c. 1800: Margaret Corbin dies, likely at or near West Point, New York.
1926: Her remains are reinterred at the West Point Cemetery with full military honors.

SOURCES

Berkin, Carol. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence. Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789. Volume XIV, July 6, 1779. Library of Congress. https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwjc.html
National Park Service. "Margaret Corbin." Fort Tryon Park / American Revolution Resources. https://www.nps.gov
Ward, Harry M. The War for Independence and the Transformation of American Society. UCL Press, 1999.
Daughters of the American Revolution. "Margaret Corbin: Heroine of Fort Washington." DAR Archives, Washington, D.C.

In New York City

Nov
1776
Fall of Fort Washington
Role: Camp Follower
# The Fall of Fort Washington By the autumn of 1776, the American struggle for independence was in serious trouble. Following a string of defeats in the New York campaign — including the disastrous Battle of Long Island in August and the subsequent retreat from Brooklyn Heights — General George Washington and his Continental Army found themselves in an increasingly desperate position. The British, under General William Howe, had systematically pushed the Americans off Long Island, forced them from lower Manhattan, and pursued them northward. By mid-November, the last American foothold on Manhattan Island was Fort Washington, a crude earthwork fortification perched on the rocky heights at the island's northern tip, near present-day Washington Heights. What happened there on November 16, 1776, would become one of the most painful episodes of the war and a turning point in Washington's evolution as a military commander. Fort Washington had been built earlier that year as part of an ambitious plan to deny the British navy free passage up the Hudson River. Paired with Fort Lee across the river on the New Jersey shore, the position was meant to create a defensive chokepoint. But British warships had already proven they could sail past the forts with relative impunity, calling into question the entire strategic rationale for holding the position. Washington himself harbored deep doubts about the wisdom of maintaining a garrison there. The fort lacked a reliable water source, had no exterior defensive walls strong enough to withstand a sustained assault, and was dangerously exposed to attack from multiple directions. Yet Nathanael Greene, one of Washington's most trusted generals and the officer directly overseeing the fort's defense, urged that the position be held. Colonel Robert Magaw, who commanded the garrison of nearly 3,000 troops, expressed confidence that his men could hold out until the end of the year. Against his better instincts, Washington deferred to their judgment. The British assault came on the morning of November 16, involving a coordinated attack by roughly 8,000 British and Hessian troops striking from several directions simultaneously. Hessian forces under General Wilhelm von Knyphausen attacked from the north, while British troops crossed the Harlem River to assault from the east and south. The fighting was fierce in places, with American defenders putting up stubborn resistance along the wooded slopes surrounding the fort. It was during this brutal combat that Margaret Corbin, a camp follower who had accompanied her husband John to the front, distinguished herself through extraordinary courage. When John Corbin was killed while manning an artillery piece, Margaret immediately took his place at the cannon, continuing to fire until she herself was severely wounded by grapeshot, suffering injuries to her arm, chest, and jaw that would leave her partially disabled for the rest of her life. Her bravery would later earn her a military pension from Congress, making her one of the first women to receive such recognition. Despite pockets of determined resistance, the American position was untenable. The outer defenses crumbled under the weight of the coordinated assault, and the surviving defenders were driven back into the cramped confines of the fort itself. With thousands of men packed into a space never designed to shelter so many, and with no realistic prospect of reinforcement or escape, Colonel Magaw surrendered the garrison. Nearly 3,000 American soldiers were taken prisoner — the largest single capture of Continental troops until the fall of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1780. Many of these prisoners would endure horrific conditions in British prison ships and makeshift jails in New York City, where disease and neglect killed hundreds. Washington reportedly watched the catastrophe unfold from across the river at Fort Lee, and witnesses described him weeping with frustration and grief. The loss was devastating not only in practical military terms but also to the morale of an army and a cause already reeling from months of defeat. The fall of Fort Washington, followed days later by the abandonment of Fort Lee, forced the Continental Army into a harrowing retreat across New Jersey. Yet the disaster carried a crucial lesson. It reinforced Washington's growing conviction that the Continental Army could not afford to defend fixed positions against a larger, better-equipped enemy. Instead, the army's survival — and with it the survival of the Revolution — depended on mobility, strategic retreat, and choosing battles carefully. This painful wisdom would shape Washington's subsequent decisions and ultimately contribute to his brilliant counterstrokes at Trenton and Princeton just weeks later, victories that revived the faltering cause and kept the dream of American independence alive.