Putting the Her in Hero:Women in the American Revolution at Pardee-Morris House
“Aunt Nancy Hart Captures the Tories,” Stories of Georgia, author Joel Chandler Harris, 1896
New Haven, Conn. (June 14, 2024) – According to history buff Eric Chandler, the giants of the American Revolution stood on the shoulders of “little” people. And it is those common people—in particular, women—to whom Chandler intends to give credit during his upcoming presentation for the New Haven Museum, “Women in the American Revolution: Putting the 'Her' in Heroics,” at the Pardee-Morris House on Sunday, July 21, 2024, at 2 p.m. Register for this free NH250 event here. For weather updates check FB/IG or call 203-562-4183.
NHM Director of Programming and Planning Cindy Riccio notes that Chandler’s lecture is a good fit for NH250, an ongoing series of programming she’s developing at NHM to complement “America 250.” Culminating with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the NH250 series will highlight inclusive, local, and lesser-known stories, connecting past and present. Chandler is completely on board. “I’d like to show that what each of us does, when taken collectively, can have a huge effect on the trajectory of history,” he says.
Chandler will highlight women—some famous, others relatively unknown—who generally saw a job that needed to be done and took matters into their own hands, including:
Deborah Sampson, who fought disguised as a man in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment,
Elizabeth "Betty" Zane, who, in the face of danger, demanded to bring badly needed ammunition to her embattled outpost.
Sybil Ludington, who rode to call the Duchess County militia to march to save Danbury, Connecticut.
Margaret Corbin, a/k/a “Molly Pitcher,” who became a mythical heroine of the American Revolution
“The role of women seemed a natural topic leading up to 250th, and I wanted to go beyond the ‘Founding Mothers.’” Chandler says. “What about the unknown heroines? Further, women are still fighting to have their place as equal at the table.”
Chandler asks that visitors consider the apocryphal tales about George Washington that were taken as historic gospel for many years, with no basis in fact. “Yet, when it comes to women, unless it was written into the contemporary record, then it ‘didn’t happen,’” Chandler adds. He notes that one of the stories he shares is about Nancy Hart Morgan, whose actions during the Revolutionary War were family lore, and adds the story was substantiated by physical evidence in 1913, 125 years after the fact.
