Culper Spies & Women in the Revolutionary War

Whether on the farm, in a tavern, working as a spy, or actively fighting in a battle, women played many roles in the American Revolution...

While formal politics did not include women at this time, everyday actions and behaviors became charged with political significance, and in this way women played an integral role.  The decision to stop drinking British tea or ordering clothes from Britain showed Colonial opposition by patriot women during the years both leading up to and during the war.

For the most post, women expressed their support through traditional gender roles, including home economics and assisting with the businesses of their husbands and fathers.  It should be noted that the war also negatively affected the lives of Tory women, who remained loyal to the crown, and those who remained politically neutral.

Fun Facts:

• Women and children often followed the army camps, cooking, cleaning, and providing laundry services, as well as assisting in field hospitals and serving as seamstresses to repair clothing, tents, and other materials.
• Some women disguised themselves as men in order to fight in the war.  Others served as spies during the war.  Women were fairly effective spies, for both sides, because they could pass through checkpoints and camps without raising too much suspicion or drawing too much attention to themselves.
• Women took care of businesses, homesteads, families, and properties when their husbands left for war.  After the war, like multiple American wars in the centuries after the American Revolution, women were expected to go back to their traditional roles.
• Women had political influence, but largely through their husbands.  One example is Abigail Adams, who famously and voluminously corresponded with her husband while he was in Philadelphia, reminding him that in the new form of government that was being established he should “remember the ladies” or they too, would foment a revolution of their own.  Learn more about Abi here.
• It was the women, through personal diaries and narratives of others, who documented the war era.

A Woman Disguised

Deborah Sampson is known for having disguised herself as a man and serving in the Continental Army under the name Robert Shirtliff, fighting in the American Revolutionary War.  She was given the dangerous task of scouting neutral territory to assess British troops in Manhattan, which General George Washington contemplated attacking.  She helped lead infantrymen on an expedition that ended with Tory confrontation, then led a raid on a Tory home that resulted in the capture of 15 men.  At the siege of Yorktown, she dug trenches, helped storm a British redoubt, and endured canon fire.

For nearly two years, she fought, her sex undetected, despite close calls.  However, when she received a gash in her forehead from a sword and was shot in her left thigh, she contracted fever, lost consciousness, and was discovered while being treated in a hospital.  Upon being discovered, she was honorably discharged.  She was the only woman to earn a full military pension for participation in the Revolutionary army. 

Hidden in Plain Sight

Nathan Hale was hung for suspected treason in 1776, and was a wake-up call to the dangers of spying in this war, leading Washington to begin the Continental Army's secret service.  Benjamin Tallmadge headed the service, based on Long Island, New York, and recruited only those men and women he felt he could 100% trust.  This group became known as the Culper Spy Ring.

Only one women is known to have been a Culper Spy.  Anna Smith Strong was said to have aided in the spy ring’s activities.  Her husband had been confined on the British prison ship HMS Jersey in 1778, and she lived alone for much of the war.  She used the laundry on her clothesline to leave signals regarding meeting locations for other spies.

The Culper Spy Ring achieved more than any other American or British intelligence network during the war.  In 1780, it uncovered British plans to ambush the newly arrived French army, and without their warnings to Washington, that alliance may well have been damaged or destroyed by this surprise attack, leading to a completely different outcome for the war.

Read

• Anna Strong & the Culper Spy Ring
• It’s a true story of the American Revolution: Meet the secret Culper Ring, a network of American spies fighting against the army of British redcoats, and historical figures like George Washington and the soon-to-be-infamous Benedict Arnold. And meet Anna Strong, an unsung heroine who found ingenious ways to communicate top-secret messages to her fellow spies, helping to save the American colonies from British rule.
  
• It’s a mystery to solve: There are clues embedded in the book’s text and illustrations. Spycraft materials, including a cipher wheel, come in an envelope at the beginning of the book. Use them to decode Anna’s hidden message and discover the secret mission she undertook for the Culper Ring!

Extra Reading

• Elementary
• Abigail Adams
• Rebel With a Cause
• Sybil Ludington Rides to the Rescue
• Upper Grades
• Betsy Dowdy's Ride
• Founding Mothers
• Girl With a Musket (TGTB Library)
• Great Women of the American Revolution
• Independent Dames
• A Voice of Her Own
• Women of the American Revolution

Watch

• Mary Silliman's War
• It is the fourth year of the War for Independence. The enemy is not only the British--Americans are also fighting among themselves. Mary Silliman's town of Fairfield, Connecticut, is bitterly divided between patriots and tories. When her husband, a fierce patriot and state's attorney, is kidnapped and held for ransom, Mary sets in motion a dangerous plan to win her husband's freedom.
• Turn (miniseries)
• Washington's Spies is the untold story of America's first spy ring. An unlikely team of secret agents form The Culper Ring to help George Washington turn the tide of the Revolutionary War.

Make / Do

• Take a virtual tour of the Fraunces Tavern Museum
• Heroes & Heroines of the American Revolution (Color & Learn)
• Make a homespun bag
• Learn easy ways to mend clothing
• Whip up a pot of camp stew
• Make a paper cannon a la Molly Pitcher
• Learn to use herbs medicinally

Identify

• Mary Ball Washington
• Martha Custis Washington
• Lucy Flucker Knox
• Abigail Adams
• Deborah Sampson
• Sybil Ludington
• Mercy Otis Warren
• Margaret Moore Barry
• Elizabeth Burgin
• Mary Hays Macauley
• Nancy Hart
• Esther DeBerdt Reed
• Margaret Cochran Corbin

Think

• Why, and in what ways, did the role of women begin to change during the American Revolution?
• How did the roles of Patriot and Tory women differ?  How were they the same?

Find more Revolutionary Resources!