GREENWICH, Conn. – Dr. Katherine Hermes, publisher and executive director of Connecticut Explored Magazine, will show how women helped to tip the scales in America’s war for independence at a talk at the Historical Society on March 8th. Working for the Revolution: Patriot Women’s Lives During the War is the third and final installment of the Reflections on the Revolution Lecture Series generously sponsored by Sotheby’s International Realty.
Using original sources from newspapers, government records and correspondence, Dr. Hermes will show how women from all backgrounds, including Anglo-European, African-descended and Indigenous populations contributed to the patriot’s cause politically, economically, intellectually, and militarily.
According to Dr. Hermes, patriot women believed in the Whig and Enlightenment ideals espoused by male revolutionaries and contributed economically to the war effort: “They produced uniforms and clothing for the Continental Army, and they continued to operate farms and urban businesses as ‘deputy husbands’ while men were away fighting. Female camp followers attached to the Continental Army from 1777 to 1783 made up about 3% of the size of the regular army and contributed to its survival.”
Dr. Hermes will address specific women in Greenwich who produced homespun goods as part of a movement that embraced the values of republicanism. Greenwich suffered an assault by British troops under British general Tryon and their allies, who ravaged the town in 1779.
She also will discuss the fate of several women who survived their husbands and tried to obtain pensions. “We can learn a lot about their lives from these records,” says Dr. Hermes. “Josiah Utter, who married his wife Mary Ketcham in Greenwich, fought in the war at the battle of Long Island and White Plains. As old woman living in New York, Mary applied for a pension, but it was rejected because she lacked proof of her dead husband’s war service from the New York comptroller.”
“Camp follower and laundress Judith Lines’ husband was at the Redding encampment and may have captured the attention of General Washington, according to a witness. As a woman of indigenous and African descent, she declined an offer to work for him. After recovering from smallpox at the Battle of the Highlands her pension application was granted.”
For more information and to purchase tickets: Click here or Working for the Revolution: Patriot Women’s Lives During the War | Greenwich Historical Society.
Participants are encouraged to dive deeper into the history of Greenwich during the tumultuous war by visiting the current exhibition Greenwich During the Revolutionary War: A Frontier Town on the Front Line, on view at the Historical Society through June. The exhibition examines the impact of the war on the town, and the daily lives of its diverse populations. For more information: https://greenwichhistory.org/rev-war/
About Katherine Hermes
Dr. Katherine Hermes is the publisher and executive director of Connecticut Explored magazine, a non-profit history publication produced for readers interested in Connecticut’s past. She is professor emerita of history at Central Connecticut State University, where she taught Early American history for 25 years. She has created and been involved with a number of digital public history projects, including Forgotten Voices of the Revolutionary War: People of Color and the Redding Encampment, 1778-1779.