Women in the Revolution

I recently finished reading a history book all about the revolution, and noticed that there weren’t very many women mentioned!  In fact, the only chapters that talk about women are one chapter about some of the things that women and children did to help, and one about Mary Katherine Goddard.  She was the first printer to print the Declaration of Independence with the signers names, forcing the signers to live up to what they signed. But her brother, jealous of her success, forced her to quit printing the paper.  And then she was replaced in her postal job in favor of a man because she was a girl and wouldn’t be able to handle the traveling the job would be requiring soon! Unfair! I had already read a book set in the Revolution, Johnny Tremain, and it also mentioned no women that did anything particularly important!

Then I read a book called Sophia’s War.  It’s about a girl named Sophia, who, when her brother dies on a cruel prison ship she vows to get revenge on the British. She becomes a spy for Robert Townsend, who reports to General Washington, and makes a terrible discovery:  The American hero, Benedict Arnold, was planning to hand West Point over to the British with John Andre!  If it were to happen, it could end the war! In Britons favor! But no one believes her, because she’s only a girl! (Which isn’t fair by the way!) Eventually she manages to get her brother’s old friend to help her. The plot was exposed and John Andre was hanged.

This story is fictional, but there is one line that Robert Townsend says: “your being a girl shall mask your true occupation” The certainty in that sentence suggests that there were real women spies in the revolution that weren’t noticed because they were women.

But I’m still really disappointed that there aren’t any real full length stories about women in the revolution. L