As Mother's Day approaches, I want to honor, by naming, women who shaped the new American nation quietly or dramatically. There is no way I can possibly know who all of them are so i invite you to add the names of those I've left out. I would also encourage others to honor, by naming, our Rebel Mothers from other periods of American history in other diaries. These are the women who help me to stay strong during these times of attack on the heart and spirit of America. We honor them best, not with flowers or parades, but by keeping vibrant the trust passed down to us.
Colonoial Mothers
Mother Ann Hutchinson
Her teachings were considered an attack on the rigid moral and legal codes of the Puritans of New England, as well as the authority of the Massachusetts clergy.
Many of her supporters deserted her when the governor, Sir Henry Vane, who favored her cause, lost his office to his staunch opponent, colonial leader John Winthrop. In 1637 she was tried by the General Court of Massachusetts, presided over by Winthrop, on the charge of traducing the ministers (such ministers as the brilliant preacher John Cotton).
The trial was a travesty of justice. Hutchinson was found guilty, excommunicated, and banned from the colony. She moved with her husband and family to Aquidneck which is now part of Rhode Island. After the death of her husband, they settled in what is now Pelham Bay, the Bronx, in New York.
Mother Abigail Adams,
consumate diarist of the revolution. Worked to see taht women recieved a right to equal education.
Mother Mercy Otis Warren
she never saw anything beyond eastern Massachusetts -- but the life of her mind was so rich that she was respected by the most cosmopolitan and politically important men of her era.
Though her brothers attended Harvard, she (like most girls in her era) got only the education that she picked up for herself. Naturally political, she involved herself from girlhood in the conversations of her father and her older brother That she waited to wed until age twenty-six showed something of her independent nature.
When the colonies increasingly rebelled against English rule. Like the men of her family, she was among those ready to throw out the colonial governor. In 1772 -- four years before the Declaration of independence -- she anonymously published The Adulateur, a satire that cast the governor as "Rapatio," a villain intent on raping the colony. Rapatio appeared again in her second play, The Defeat (1773), and she published her third, The Group (a title she used two centuries before Mary McCarthy), in 1775, just as the rebellion began to be violent. All were thinly disguised attacks on specific public officials, for she unhesitatingly urged the taking of risks to achieve American independence.
Mother Clementina Rind
took over publishing the "Virginia Gazette" following the death of her husband
Mother Lydia Broadnax,
a free black, strong and spirited women participated in the American Revolution.
Mother Deborah Champion,
galloped for 2 days through enemy lines to carry intelligence information to Gen. Washington
Mother Emily Geiger
rode 100 miles through the South Carolina swamps to deliver dispatches from Gen. Nathaniel Greene to Gen. Thomas Sumter
Mother Susanna Bolling
a teenager who crossed the Appomattox River, alone and at night, to warn Gen. Lafayette of a planned British attack
Mother Betsy Dowd,
a 16 year old, who warned the Americans of Gov. Dunmore's plans to capture the coast, enabling the army to defeat Dunmore's forces and take Norfolk, Virginia.
Mother Lydia Barrington Darragh,
mother of 9, who spied on a meeting of British commanders and crossed enemy lines to alert Washington to a plan to ambush his troops at White Marsh, Pennsylvania.
Mother Catherine Van Rennsaelear Schuyler,
the wife of an American General and mother of 14 children, ignored the danger of hostile Native Americans allied with the English and advancing British troops to ride from New York City to her family's farm and burn the crops so the British could not harvest them. Her example inspired other wealthy farmers to burn their fields.
Margaret Vliet Warne,
a practicing physician in New Jersey, rode through the country treating soldiers and their families without charge and without military status.
Mother Prudence Wright
commanded a troop of women who dressed as men to defend the town of Pepperell Massachusetts. They captured a British courier and sent the plans he carried to the leaders of the Massachusetts militia.
Mother Margaret Cochran Corbin,
was assisting her husband John with his cannon when he was killed on Nov. 16, 1776 during a British and Hessian attack on Fort Washington, New York. She took over the cannon and continued to fire at the enemy until she was seriously wounded and lost the use of her arm. In 1779 she was awarded a disabled soldier's pension by the Continental Congress and in 1780 became the only woman enrolled in the "Invalid Regiment" which was stationed at West Point. When the "Invalid Regiment" was disbanded in 1783 Corbin remained in the area drawing her supplies from the commissary and being cared for by the military. She is buried in the soldier's graveyard behind the Old Cadet Chapel at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point where a bronze plaque commemorates her as "the first American woman to take a soldier's part in the War for Liberty".
Mother Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley
served alongside her husband, John Hays, in the 1st Pennsylvania Artillery and later in the 7th Pennsylvania Regiment. On the battlefield she carried water, swabbed out cannon bores and loaded shot. When John was seriously wounded in June 1778 while fighting at Monmouth, New Jersey, Mary ignored her own wounds and operated his cannon until the battle ended. After the war she was awarded a veteran's pension of $40 per year by the State of Pennsylvania. She is believed by many historians to be the inspiration for the legendary "Molly Pitcher".
Mother Ann Bailey
who joined the First Massachusetts Regiment on February 17, 1777 under the name Sam Gay. Shortly afterward she was promoted to corporal. On March 3, 1777 Bailey's gender was discovered and she disappeared. Seven days later Captain Abraham Hunt swore out an arrest warrant for Bailey, "who dressed herself in mens Cloths, enlisted as a Soldier in my company in Co. Patterson's Reg & Rec'd fifteen pounds & ten shilling Bounty from this State and then absented herself". On August 26, 1777 Bailey was sentenced to two months in jail and fined 16 pounds.