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Women of the American Revolution

Introduction

The American Revolution transformed women’s lives. The domestic domain, once seen as divorced from politics, suddenly became political.¹ Women’s choices, including what they bought and who they married, carried new political weight. For enslaved women, the upheaval created new opportunities for freedom.

Catherine Rathell wondered if she should leave Virginia since she could not import the goods she needed for her business. Mary Halstead, an enslaved woman, faced the decision of whether to run for freedom, knowing that success meant an unknown future and failure meant severe punishment. As the widowed manager of a plantation, Mary Willing Byrd had to navigate how much to concede when British soldiers landed on her property.

What choices would women make when faced with monument decisions in extraordinary times? What consequences would those decisions bring?

Stories of Women

Her Story: Women in Colonial Virginia

This Trend & Tradition article explores women’s lives in colonial America, including how they navigated legal and social constraints.

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The Eve of Revolution

Business-Owners and Non-importation:
Catherine Rathell

In eighteenth-century Virginia, women owned and operated business of all kinds, from printing presses to taverns. Their livelihoods became entangled in revolutionary politics with the rise of non-importation agreements—pledges to stop importing and purchasing British goods to pressure Parliament to repeal unpopular taxes and policies. Signers of these agreements promised not to import goods from Great Britain. At the same time, consumers were urged not to purchase imported goods in colonial stores.²

These agreements directly affected female business owners like milliner Catherine Rathell. Rathell came from Britain to Virginia in the 1760s and started her business in the millinery trade.³ She sold fashionable goods imported from Great Britain in her store, including handkerchiefs, fans, and shoe buckles.⁴ When Virginia’s merchants halted British imports in 1774, Rathell faced a crisis. How could she sustain her business without imported goods? Ultimately she chose to return to England, planning to stay “until liberty of importation is allowed.”⁵ Just miles from the English shore, the ship she was on got caught in a hurricane and she perished in a shipwreck.⁶ Though the end of her story was atypical, she was just one of the many colonial women whose business was affected by revolutionary politics.

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Boycotts and Homespun

Dig Deeper

Non-importation affected all women, not just business owners. As primary consumers for their households, revolutionaries urged women to stop buying imported goods. Their business decisions and purchases became political. And they knew it.

Dig Deeper

The “Liberty of Importation”

Catherine Rathell provided notice in a newspaper advertisement that she would be going to England “until liberty of importation is allowed.”

Virginia Gazette (Pinkney), April 20, 1775.

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Dig Deeper

“Public Virtue”

Women in Virginia penned a letter printed in the Virginia Gazette urging their fellow countrywomen to stop buying imported tea. These unnamed women claimed that they were no longer purchasing imported tea and made tea from local herbs instead. These actions were testimony to the ladies’ “public virtue.”

Virginia Gazette (Rind), September 15, 1774.

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Dig Deeper

“Homespun Gowns”

Women made homespun fabric and wore homespun garments to show their political affiliation. At a ball held at the Capitol in 1769, 100 women reportedly wore homespun. The report, which might have been exaggerated, publicly signaled Virginia women’s “patriotic spirit.”

Virginia Gazette (Rind), December 14, 1769.

See the source in context

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Dig Deeper

“Expert spinners”

Plantation owners turned to their enslaved workforce to do the spinning and weaving required to produce homespun. In 1775, Robert Carter instructed his overseers to “sett a part, Ten black Females the most Expert spinners belonging to me—they to be Employed in Spinning, solely.”(7)

Enslaved People of the Carter Household

Dunmore’s Proclamation: Mary Halstead

The American Revolution transformed enslaved women’s lives, opening new opportunities for freedom. In November 1775, Virginia’s royal governor Lord Dunmore issued a proclamation that would change the course of thousands of lives. Dunmore’s Proclamation offered freedom to “indentured Servants, Negroes, or others, (appertaining to Rebels,)” who were "able and willing to bear Arms” and serve in “his Majesty’s troops.”⁸

While the wording of the proclamation was aimed at men, about a third of the enslaved people who fled to the British for their freedom and were women and children.⁹ Women often fled with their children. Mary Halstead, who was enslaved in Hampton, Virginia, by Francis Rice, escaped in Spring 1776 with her three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Phillis. The historical record is silent on how they survived the war, but in 1783 they were in New York, getting onto a British ship which took them to Nova Scotia to establish their lives as free people.¹⁰

Escaping to Freedom

Learn more about enslaved women who escaped to the British during the American Revolution and what sources reveal, and don’t reveal, about their experiences.

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Women & the War

The Home Front: Mary Willing Byrd

While women’s actions became political before the war, the war itself upended their lives. Unable or unwilling to stay in communities ripped apart by political difference, some Loyalists left. Virginia’s Attorney General John Randolph fled with his wife, Ariana, and two daughters, Ariana and Susannah.¹¹ Women who remained at home while their husbands governed or went to war were left to manage their households in a time of economic depression and irregular access to basic necessities.¹² They gained new skills and insights as they navigated their family’s business affairs. Some came to value their newfound abilities.¹³ Massachusetts resident Lucy Knox wrote her husband, General Henry Knox, “I hope you will not consider yourself as commander in chief of your own house — but be convinced… that there is such a thing as equal command.”¹⁴

Mary Willing Byrd was a widow whose husband had died in 1777. She took on the tasks of executing his will and raising their children while also managing plantations at Westover and Buckland, Virginia. Meanwhile, the war raged on. In 1781, Benedict Arnold brought an invasion force literally to Mary’s doorstep. Disembarking at Westover plantation, she had no choice but to allow them use of the property. After they left, she communicated with Arnold in order to seek the return of some property, including enslaved people. When the American forces found out about their communications, they searched her home for evidence of spying and put her under house arrest. She was investigated for treason, but never officially tried.¹⁵

Molly_Gutridge,_Ezekiel_Russell,_1779-(1) — Woodcut from Molly Gutridge, “A new touch on the times...” The New York Historical Society.

Women and the Army

Women provided invaluable support to the British and American military as nurses, laundresses, and cooks. In some cases, they were spies and even soldiers.

“Women of the Army”

Some women travelled with the American and British armies, providing crucial military support. These women were sometimes seen as a nuisance but were irreplaceable to their army as they provided labor like laundry and cooking to the American and the British armies.¹⁶
Sarah Osborn’s husband Aaron was a soldier during the revolutionary war. She accompanied him and performed crucial tasks for the army, including “washing, mending, and cooking for the soldiers, in which she was assisted by the other females.” Sarah Osborn followed George Washington’s army to Yorktown, where she brought “beef and bread, and coffee” to soldiers as they built entrenchments. On one occasion, she met George Washington, who asked her if she "was not afraid of the Cannon balls." She replied "no... that it would not do for the men to fight and starve too."¹⁷
Black women also supported military operations. Judith Jackson fled to the British in 1779 and later reported that she had been “with Lord Dunmore, Washing & Ironing in his Service.”¹⁸
Soldiers

Women sometimes stepped into more even dangerous roles during the American Revolution. Historians have documented several women who disguised themselves as men and served in the war as soldiers. Perhaps the most famous of these women was Deborah Sampson from Massachusetts.¹⁹ Ana Maria Lane was likely from New England as well and possibly traveled with the army when her husband was a soldier. While documents reveal few details about her decision to pick up arms during the Battle of Germantown, later records claimed that “having been disabled by a severe wound which she received while fighting, as a common soldier, in one of our Revolutionary battles, from which she never has recovered, and perhaps never will recover.” She and her husband eventually settled in Virginia, where she received a pension for her war service.²⁰
Spies

Women spied for both sides in the war by passing critical information to key figures. Nanyehi (Nancy Ward), a Cherokee woman who had participated in military combat previously, passed intelligence to American allies during the Revolution.²¹ Loyalist women demonstrated their commitment to the British cause by providing intelligence to British forces. Philadelphia businesswoman Margaret Hutchinson did business with American forces, allowing her to carry letters between British spies and report back what she observed.²²

18th-Century People

Nanyehi (Nancy Ward): A Beloved Woman of Chota

Learn more about the Cherokee leader who worked for peace during the American Revolution.

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Resources

Colonial Williamsburg Publications & Productions
Aron, Paul. “'Fighting as a Common Soldier' - Anna Maria Lane.” Trend and Tradition 2, no. 2 (Spring 2017), 86-88.
Aron, Paul. “Who was Agent 355? The Mystery Behind the Identity of a Revolutionary War Spy.” Trend and Tradition (Spring 2024), https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/discover/resource-hub/trend-tradition-magazine/trend-tradition-spring-2024/who-was-agent-355/.
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. “A Bold Type: Clementina Rind’s Revolutionary Press.” September 25, 2024. https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/discover/18th-century-people/stories-of-women/a-bold-type-clementina-rinds-revolutionary-press/.
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. “Nanyehi (Nancy Ward): A Beloved Woman of Chota.” February 4, 2025. https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/discover/18th-century-people/stories-of-american-indian-life/nanyehi-nancy-ward-a-beloved-woman-of-chota/.
Keiter, Lindsay. “More Power to you: Abigail Adams Advocated Dismantling the ‘Masculine System’ that Denied Property and Legal Rights to Married Women.” Trend and Tradition 2, no. 2 (Spring 2027).
McNeil, Adam. “Norfolk to Nova Scotia: Judith Jackson’s Crooked Road to Freedom.” Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. September 23, 2024. https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/discover/18th-century-people/stories-of-black-life/judith-jacksons/.
“Women of the Revolution.” Past and Present Podcast. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. https://podcast.history.org/2011/05/09/women-of-the-revolution/.
“Women Soldiers.” Past and Present Podcast. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. https://podcast.history.org/2010/05/31/women-soldiers/.
Resources for Teachers

What was life like for women during the American Revolution? Use resources on the Bob & Marion Wilson Educator Resource Library to understand the opportunities and challenges of diverse populations of girls and women in their daily lives.

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Online Primary Sources
Adams Family Papers through the Massachusetts Historical Society: Includes Abigail Adams letters throughout the revolutionary era, including her famous letter to her husband John urging him and his fellow lawmakers to “remember the ladies.”
Phillis Wheatley papers through the Massachusetts Historical Society: Includes poetry and correspondence written by the Black poet Phillis Wheatley.
Mercy Otis Warren papers through the Massachusetts Historical Society: Includes correspondence of the playwright, poet, and early historian of the American Revolution, Mercy Otis Warren.
“Sentiments of an American Woman” by Esther de Berdt Reed: This pamphlet urged women to actively support the American war effort.
Sarah Livingston Jay letters available on Founders Online: Sarah Livingston Jay wrote to her husband John Jay and to friends and family during the war years.
Letters by Molly/Mary Brant: There are few primary sources written by Indigenous women from the American Revolution. These two letters show Molly’s role as a diplomat between the British and Mohawk people. The two letters can be found here and here.
Sarah Benjamin’s Eyewitness Account of the Siege of Yorktown: Sarah Benjamin provided military support to the American army and was witness to the Siege of Yorktown.
The Book of Negroes available through the Nova Scotia Archives: This record of Black Loyalists leaving New York City in 1783 during the British occupation includes valuable biographic information as well as testimony regarding the contributions of self-liberated Black men and women during the war.
“On the Equality of Sexes” by Judith Sargent Murray: The revolutionary call for equality influenced women like Judith Sargent Murray, who argued in this essay that women were intellectually equal to men but received unequal education.
Life of Deborah Sampson: The Female Soldier in the War of the Revolution: While not directly written by Sampson, this memoir details her experiences as a woman who disguised herself as a man and fought in the American Revolution.
Books and Articles
Arendt, Emily J. "Ladies Going about for Money: Female Voluntary Associations and Civic Consciousness in the American Revolution." Journal of the Early Republic 34, no. 2 (July 2014): 157-186.
Beatty, Jacqueline. In Dependence: Women and the Patriarchal State in Revolutionary America. New York University Press, 2023.
Bell, Karen Cook. Running From Bondage: Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America. Cambridge University Press, 2021.
Berkin, Carol. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence. Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
Brandt, Susan. "’Getting into a Little Business’: Margaret Hill Morris and Women's Medical Entrepreneurship during the American Revolution." Early American Studies 13, no. 4 (October 2015): 774-807.
DuVal, Lauren. "Mastering Charleston: Property and Patriarchy in British-Occupied Charleston, 1780-82." The William and Mary Quarterly 75, no 4 (October 2018): 589-622.
Hartigan-O’Connor, Ellen. The Ties that Buy: Women and Commerce in Revolutionary America. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.
Hoffman, Ronald and Peter J. Albert, eds. Women in the Age of the American Revolution. University Press of Virginia, 1989.
Kerber, Linda. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America. University of North Carolina Press, 1980.
Kierner, Cynthia A. The Tory's Wife: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America. University of Virginia Press, 2023.
Kolp, John G., and Terri L. Snyder. "Women and the Political Culture of Eighteenth-Century Virginia: Gender, Property Law, and Voting Rights." In The Many Legalities of Early America, edited by Christopher L. Tomlins and Bruce H. Mann. University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
Lacey, Barbara E. "Women in the Era of the American Revolution: The Case of Norwich Connecticut." The New England Quarterly 53, no. 4 (December 1980): 527-543.
Loane, Nancy K. Following the Drum: Women at the Valley Forge Encampment. Potomac Books, 2009.
Mann, Barbara Alice. “War Women of the Eastern Woodlands.” In Women Waging War in the American Revolution, edited by Holly A. Mayer. University of Virginia Press, 2022.
Mayer, Holly A. Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community during the American Revolution. University of South Carolina Press, 1996.
Miller, Marla R. Betsy Ross and the Making of America. Henry Holt and Co., 2010.
Norton, Mary Beth. Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800. Cornell University Press, 1980.
Oberg, Barbara, ed., Women in the American Revolution: Gender, Politics, and the Domestic World. University of Virginia Press, 2019.
Rountree, Helen C. “Edy Turner: The Nottoway Indians’ ‘Female Chief.’” In Virginia Women: Their Lives and Times, edited by Cynthia A. Kierner and Sandra Gioia Treadway. University of Georgia Press, 2015.
Stuart, Nancy Rubin. Poor Richard's Women: Deborah Read Franklin and the Other Women Behind the Founding Father. Beacon Press, 2022.
Stuart, Nancy Rubin. The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation. Beacon Press, 2008.
Tillman, Kacy Dowd. Stripped and Script: Loyalist Women Writers of the American Revolution. University of Massachusetts Press, 2019.
Weyler, Karen A. Empowering Words: Outsiders & Authorship in Early America. The University of Georgia Press, 2013.
Young, Alfred F. Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier. Vintage, 2005.
Zabin, Serena. The Boston Massacre: A Family History. Mariner Books, 2020.

Sources

Mary Beth Norton, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980), 155-156.
Norton, Liberty's Daughters, 157-163; James R. Fichter, “Collecting Debts: Virginia Merchants, the Continental Association, and the Meetings of November 1774,” Virginia Magazine of History & Biography 130, no. 3 (2022): 172-217.
Virginia Gazette (Purdie & Dixon), April 18, 1766; Kaylan M. Stevenson, “’Until Liberty of Importation Is Allowed: Milliners and Mantuamakers in the Chesapeake on the Eve of Revolution” in Barbara Oberg, ed., Women in the American Revolution: Gender, Politics, and the Domestic World (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019), 39.
Virginia Gazette (Purdie & Dixon), April 18, 1766; Eleanor Kelley Cabell, “Women Merchants and Milliners in Eighteenth Century Williamsburg,” Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1988, https://research.colonialwilliamsburg.org/DigitalLibrary/view/index.cfm?doc=ResearchReports%5CRR0192.xml.
Virginia Gazette (Pinkney), April 20, 1775.
London Evening-Post, October 28-31, 1775.
Robert Carter to William Taylor, Feb. 21, 1775, Letterbook II, 189, Robert Carter Letter Books and Day Books, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Quoted in Norton, Liberty's Daughters, 164.
Virginia Gazette (Purdie), November 24, 1775, link.
Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1961), 171-2.
The Book of Negroes, Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester: Papers, The National Archives, Kew (PRO 30/55/100) 10427, 148-149, https://archives.novascotia.ca/africanns/book-of-negroes/page/?ID=85.
Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Hunter), September 9, 1775. Four years later, Randolph wrote to Thomas Jefferson about his experience as a Loyalists in Williamsburg, including how people treated his wife and daughters, “But, the unmanly and illiberal Treatment, which the more delicate Part of my Family met with, I confess, fill’d me with the highest Resentment.” John Randolph to Thomas Jefferson, October 25, 1779, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-03-02-0137.
Carol Berkin, Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 24-35.
Norton, Liberty's Daughters, 215-225.
Lucy Knox to Henry Knox, August 23, 1777, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/02437.00638_OS.docx_.pdf.
Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch, “’What Am I but an American?’: Mary Willing Byrd and Westover Plantation during the American Revolution,” in Barbara Oberg, ed., Women in the American Revolution, 176-185. Some of the people enslaved at Westover used the British presence to their advantage and ran. One woman, Fanny Harris, appears in the Book of Negroes in 1783, https://blackloyalist.com/cdc/documents/official/black_loyalist_directory_book_two.htm.
Berkin, Revolutionary Mothers, 51-53.
Sarah Benjamin’s Eyewitness Account of the Surrender at Yorktown, November 20, 1837, National Archives, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/1636083?objectPanel=transcription.
Judith Jackson to Carleton, “Judith Jackson to Carleton. New York. Petition. Discusses her previous situation in service and [. . .] ,” September 18, 1783, 30/55/81/95/9158, Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester Papers, PRO, TNA. Quoted in Kacy Dowd Tillman, “The Limits and Liberty of Loyalty: Black Loyalism in the Book of Negroes,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 23, no. 1 (Winter 2025): 48.
Norton, Liberty's Daughters, 174-175.
Sandra Gioia Treadway, “Anna Maria Lane: An Uncommon Soldier of the American Revolution,” Virginia Cavalcade 37, no. 3 (1988): 134–143; “Anna Maria Lane, Commendation and Pension Award from William H. Cabell, 1808,” Document Bank of Virginia, accessed March 18, 2025, https://edu.lva.virginia.gov/dbva/items/show/255.
Ben Harris McClary, “Nancy Ward: The Last Beloved Woman of the Cherokees,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 21 (December 1962): 352-364.
Norton, Liberty's Daughters, 174-175.

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Women of the American Revolution

On This page

Introduction

Her Story: Women in Colonial Virginia

The Eve of Revolution

Business-Owners and Non-importation:
Catherine Rathell