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This cache is placed near the resting place of Molly Pitcher. If you enjoy history this is a neat place to check out. It is also the resting place for 2 Generals, William Thompson and John Armstrong Sr, a Continental Congressman, John Montgomery and a US Congressman, James Armstrong.
There is NO night caching allowed. Sunrise to sunset only! PLEASE BE RESPECTFUL OF ALL GRAVES AND HEADSTONES. THE CACHE IS NOT ON EITHER.
Congrats to Nikongt, regal-lager and Seekers Four for the FTF!!
Take a few minutes to look at some of the dates on the stones. Many date back into the 1700's. What is the oldest you can find?
Molly Pitcher’s heroism during the Revolutionary War (1775-83) at the battle of Monmouth has been celebrated by American patriots ever since. Pitcher fought valiantly for seven years in the Pennsylvania State Regiment of Artillery. She served as second in command at her husband’s artillery post, swabbing the cannon’s bore between shots. Her nickname, Molly Pitcher (by which most people know her; her last name may have been Ludwig, though this is in dispute), derives from her carrying water in pitchers to thirsty soldiers during the Monmouth battle. In recognition of her services during the war, the Pennsylvania state legislature in 1822 awarded her payment of $40 immediately, with the same sum to be paid her annually until her death. Her place of burial is recorded as Carlisle, Pennsylvania; some claim she lies in the graveyard at West Point. Feisty and unkempt in appearance, Pitcher had a reputation for swearing “like a trooper.”
Pitcher was born probably on October 3, 1754, near Trenton, New Jersey, possibly the daughter of John George Ludwig. Ludwig had immigrated from the German state of Palatinate in 1749 and had settled in Mercer County, New Jersey, where he and his family operated a dairy farm. Pitcher left home as a teenager to become a domestic servant at the home of Dr. William Irvine in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She met and married John Caspar Hays, the local barber, with whom she had one son, John L. Hays.
The American Revolution determined that the future of Great Britain’s 13 colonies, located on the Atlantic seaboard of North America, would be as an independent nation, the United States. The war was fought on ideological, political, and economic grounds. Colonists demanding independence from Great Britain, including Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and Thomas Paine (1737-1809) argued that humans have the right, indeed the obligation, to seek liberty when oppressed. Great Britain’s economic policies, such as taxing the colonists without providing them with a voice in Parliament, were seen as so egregious that some colonists demanded war. Throughout the course of the war, however, many Americans, especially royal officeholders, and farmers who benefited from trade with Great Britain, remained loyal to the crown. Others, including small businessmen, had grown weary of the repressive taxes Great Britain had burdened its colonists with, and they heeded the call to arms and liberty. For many men, the colonial army offered three meals a day and a paycheck.
John Caspar Hays enlisted as a gunner in Thomas Proctor’s First Company of Pennsylvania Artillery in December 1775. Meanwhile, Mary Hays’s employer, Dr. William Irvine, had formed the Seventh Pennsylvania Regiment, which he commanded. In 1778, Hays reenlisted with Irvine’s company. For a time, Mary Hays remained in Carlisle, until she joined her husband’s regiment as a camp follower.
The tradition of camp followers dates back at least as far as the Middle Ages (800-1300). Most camp followers were women who wanted to join their husbands in battle. Typically, camp followers performed wifely duties at camp, such as cooking meals, washing clothes, obtaining water supplies, and treating wounds. Generally, wives took care of their own families (they often brought their young children with them), not of the whole company. The term camp follower also represents the women who traveled with the military and worked as prostitutes.
Mary Hays chose to become more of a soldier than most camp followers, assisting her husband on the battlefront. During the retreat of the American soldiers from Fort Clinton, Hays’s comrades in arms took note of her courage and daring. Cannoneers who were forced to abandon their weapons in a retreat usually tried to load them for a parting shot as the enemy closed in on their position. In the terror of the retreat, however, Captain John Hays dropped the match, and he ran to join his company. Mary Hays, following behind her husband, deftly picked up the dropped match and set off the cannon in the face of the British attackers. She narrowly escaped the volley of shots that peppered the battlefield.
On Sunday, June 28, 1778, Mary Hays assisted her husband at his cannon on an unusually hot summer day. As the battle raged, soldiers began crying out for water on the front lines. Hays found an old broken pitcher lying about in camp. She quickly filled it with water at a nearby spring and delivered the cool, soothing liquid to parched soldiers’ throats. Thereafter, she was known as Molly Pitcher.
Captain John Caspar Hays was killed by British artillery later that day. His wife witnessed his painful death on the battlefield (some sources say that he was only wounded). Mary Hays knew that if no one were to take her husband’s place at his cannon, however, the battle, and other lives, would be lost. So she took her husband’s place behind the cannon, loading and firing the weapon, so the story goes, as adeptly as her husband.
After the battle of Monmouth, Pitcher returned to Carlisle, where she married John McCauley (spellings vary), but she was again widowed in 1808 or 1809. Pitcher spent her days cleaning and performing other odd domestic jobs for her subsistence. When she died on January 22, 1832, her obituaries in local newspapers made no mention of her war service at all, despite the honor bestowed on her by the Pennsylvania legislature. Her grave lay unmarked in the Carlisle cemetery.
During the centennial of the American Revolution, Pitcher’s story became intertwined and confused with that of Margaret Corbin (1751-1800). Like Pitcher, Corbin also served as a cannoneer and, like Pitcher, she took over her husband’s duties after he had been shot dead. Unlike Pitcher, however, Corbin was wounded and disabled in battle. In July 1779, Congress passed a resolution calling for the payment to Corbin of the sum of one-half the monthly pay drawn by a soldier for the rest of her life.
Pitcher became a celebrity during the nation’s centennial celebration in 1876, when a Carlisle resident who remembered her story suggested that a tombstone be placed over her grave. In 1905, a cannon, flag, and flagstaff were added, and in 1916, a state monument was erected and dedicated at her burial site. Residents of Monmouth, New Jersey, dedicated a bronze statue of a barefoot Molly Pitcher standing beside her cannon, water pail by her side.
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