Margaret Corbin

Margaret Corbin was born Margaret Cochran on the Pennsylvania frontier in 1751. She married John Corbin, an artilleryman, and followed the army the way many wives did — cooking, washing, and standing close enough to a gun to learn its work. On November 16, 1776, at Fort Washington on Manhattan, John was killed at his piece. Margaret took the rammer and served the gun until she was hit. The wound crippled her for life.

The British took the fort. She survived as a prisoner and was later paroled. In 1779 the Continental Congress awarded her a soldier's half-pay pension — the first American woman so recognized for combat wounds. She lived out her years near West Point, difficult, disabled, and entitled.

She died on January 16, 1800. The West Point cemetery holds a grave in her name; the remains have a complicated later history, and this page will not pretend a reburial erased the original wound. No contemporary portrait is known; the oil likeness on this page is a respectful later painting, not a face taken from life.

She is not a mascot. She is a gunner who was shot doing a man's job that had just become hers, and a Congress that, for once, paid.