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In wartime, it helps to know what the enemy is planning to do.
A spy’s job is to find out enemy secrets. Women made good spies during the Revolution because no one suspected them of being clever enough—or brave enough—to do the job. Several women became saboteurs (sa-buh-TERS). Saboteurs commit acts of sabotage, meaning that they destroy things that the enemy could use.
◀ Patience Lovell Wright was an artist who made wax figures of famous people. In 1772, she moved to England. There, she met many important people. When the Revolution started, Lovell began to spy for the Patriots, passing along information she heard from her famous friends. According to legend, she sent information to the colonies by hiding messages inside wax figures that she shipped over for display.
▲ Lydia Darragh was a midwife, nurse, and undertaker. Though her family were Quakers, who did not believe in war, they supported the Revolution. When British officers took over rooms in her family’s Philadelphia home for meetings, she listened to their conversations at a keyhole. Her son then carried information to Washington’s troops outside of the city. One time, when Darragh thought the danger too great to involve her son, she walked six miles until she met one of Washington’s scouts. Her information helped Washington prepare for a British attack.
◀ Laodicea “Dicey” Langston was 15 years old when Loyalist troops camped near her family’s South Carolina farm. She observed the Loyalists for months. She passed on information to local Patriot militias. One night she traveled 20 miles to warn her brother’s militia that the Loyalists were planning an attack. Langston is pictured defending her elderly father against British soldiers, who admired her for her bravery.
Much of the information that Patriot women gave the troops they had simply overheard. But Sally Townsend was part of a professional spy ring. When the British occupied New York City, some of them stayed at the boardinghouse run by Sally’s father. Sally gathered information there. Because of a tip from her, Patriot forces captured Major John André, an important British spy. The papers he carried proved that Patriot traitor Benedict Arnold was about to turn over the fort at West Point to the British. ▶
▲ In 1780, Martha Bratton’s husband left her guarding a warehouse full of gunpowder in South Carolina. Bratton learned that Loyalists planned to raid the warehouse. So she set fire to it and destroyed all of the ammunition to keep it from falling into Loyalist hands.
◀ Many Patriot prisoners of war were housed on British prison ships in New York Harbor. Conditions on these ships were horrible. Elizabeth Burgin, a widow and mother, often took food and supplies to the prisoners. In 1779, she helped more than 200 men escape by giving them the details of a Patriot plan to get them off the ships.
▲ Some Patriot women set fire to their own property to keep Loyalists from using it. Catherine Schuyler set fire to her family’s wheat fields in upstate New York so the British troops could not use the crops. In revenge, the British burned Schuyler’s house to the ground.
