Obstinate Daughters: shining a light on the women who sparked the American Revolution

A revealing new book, eight years in the making, singles out rebellious women from US history whose stories have often been sidelined

Margaret Corbin was a hero of the American Revolution, the wife of an artilleryman killed at Fort Washington in New York who took over his gun to fight the British. Grievously wounded, she became the first woman to receive a US military pension. In 1926, 150 years after the battle, her supposed remains were exhumed in Highland Falls, up the Hudson from Manhattan, and buried at the US Military Academy.

“There was so much energy and wonderful intention behind doing this,” said Denise Kiernan, of what remains the only monument to a woman at West Point. “And then in 2016 they took a look and said, ‘Oh wait a minute, not only are the bones not hers, they’re not the bones of a woman.’”