Vineyard Women in American Revolutionary War

1 of 2

The narrative about the American Revolutionary War is told almost exclusively in military terms and is, thus, predominantly about men. On Wednesday, March 19, Martha’s Vineyard Museum research librarian Bow Van Riper will share fascinating insights into the role of Vineyard women during the war. We recently spoke about his upcoming talk, aptly titled “Redcoats and Resilience: Vineyard Women in the Revolution.”

Van Riper began by setting the stage: “The women who fit into the stock narrative of the Revolution are a handful of outliers such as Betsy Ross, whose story was apparently, you’ll excuse the expression, invented out of whole cloth by descendants, decades and decades after the actual event, and has no basis in any contemporary evidence.” He also mentioned Mary Ludwig Hays, who earned the nickname “Molly Pitcher” for supplying water to wounded soldiers during the Battle of Monmouth, and Deborah Sampson, who disguised herself as a man and served in the Continental Army. “With possibly a few others, most of us of a certain age likely can’t name many others,” says Van Riper.

“What I’m trying to do in the talk is, in the context of the Vineyard, to present a more complete picture of the history of the Revolution and run-up to it that suggests women played a much more significant role than we’re used to thinking of, because of the Western tendency to reduce all wars to what’s happening on the battlefield.” The reality of any war, especially for people in whose backyard it’s being fought, is that it affects what’s going on at home, the economic climate at large, and relationships with one’s neighbors.

Although the pitched battles of the war were going on someplace else, Van Riper identifies several factors that contributed to the considerable uncertainty and vulnerability Vineyarders must have felt in the 1770s. The Island was situated alongside one of the world’s most important maritime trade routes. Many people depended on it economically for fishing, merchant shipping, importing goods to stock stores, and exporting crops: “What happens to those people when the colonies suddenly go to war against the greatest naval power the world has ever known? The Vineyard was now at war with a country that could strangle maritime trade without even breathing hard.”

In addition, as an Island, the Vineyard was within easy cannon fire from British warships: “A modest-size British frigate with 20 or 24 guns could completely lay waste to Holmes Hole [now Vineyard Haven] or Edgartown, in maybe an hour. A couple of boatloads of Royal Marines with torches could set the town on fire and burn it to the ground. The people living on the Vineyard when the Revolution was going on were suddenly living in a state of incredible uncertainty and an imminent, looming, existential threat.”

Van Riper also touched on the pervasive level of political tension on the Island. “The Revolution, indeed, was a civil war. In the run-up to it, there were people absolutely committed to open defiance of the Crown, and for independence. There were equally people at the other end of the spectrum who were deeply committed to loyalty to the king and maintaining good relations with Britain. On the Vineyard, everybody knew where you stood on things. And if you stood for independence, many of your neighbors would view you as some kind of dangerous rabble-rouser.”

In his talk, Van Riper will share examples of how the war impacted the lives of Vineyard women. One notable event was Grey’s Raid in 1778, during which the British seized 10,000 sheep and 300 cattle, destroyed saltworks, broke up several whaleboats, confiscated arms and powder, and pocketed tax money. “But it wasn’t just a foraging expedition. It’s also the British showing up and saying, ‘Knock it off, or we’re going to get serious.’” He will recount several stories of plucky women outwitting the redcoats, which, despite the lack of contemporary evidence, reflect women in traditional roles defending the home and hearth against marauding forces.

There is also the classic example of the three young women who, one night in 1778, blew up the Liberty Pole in Holmes Hole. Thus, they thwarted the efforts of the captain of a British ship, who had demanded the pole to replace a broken spar. “It is a gesture of political defiance,” says Van Riper. “Undertaken openly by the town’s men, this would have been an incredibly dangerous thing that could get the British annoyed to devastating effect. But they had plausible deniability because the women had done it under the cover of darkness, and no one would have guessed that females had undertaken such an act.”

Van Riper will share other specific examples, but he says, “What I want the talk to be is both a deeper look at the role that women played in the Revolution, but also a closer examination of why the stories we have traditionally told about them tell us more about who we are than about those women who were on the Vineyard in the 1770s. And about how the real story, when you come down to it, is even better than what’s come down to us.”

“Redcoats and Resilience: Vineyard Women in the Revolution” with Bow Van Riper at the M.V. Museum takes place on Wednesday, March 19, 5:30 – 6:30 pm. For more information and tickets, visit mvmuseum.org/event/red-coats-and-resilience.