While the history books are filled with the accounts of male soldiers and patriots during the American Revolution, the efforts of women are generally overlooked. That’s not the case here as women such as Martha Bratton, who blew up a supply of gunpowder lest it fall into British hands, take center stage. Among the other women heroes featured are spies, a patriotic publisher, and even a woman who disguised herself as a man to enlist in the Continental Army.
Here’s an excerpt from Women Heroes of the American Revolution:
“Nancy Hart could get things done! When Colonel Elijah Clarke, one of the leaders of the Georgia militia, needed information about what the British troops on the other side of the Savannah River were planning, Nancy Hart volunteered to cross the river and find out what she could. The only problem was there was no bridge. That didn’t stop ‘Aunt Nancy,’ as she was often called.
“Described as ‘six feet high, very muscular, and erect in her gait; her hair light brown,’ Nancy gathered some logs strewn along the riverside and used those muscles of her to tie them together with vines to form a raft, which she navigated across the river. She got the information, returned, and told it to the Georgia troops.”
(Chicago Review Press, 240 pp.)
