Pitcher Moll

Waupaca Record

February 20, 1908

“MOLL PITCHER”

“Moll Pitcher” was the daughter of a Pennsylvania German family living in the vicinity of Carlisle. She was born in 1748, and her name was Mary Ludwig, a pure German name. She was married to one John Casper Hayes, a barber, who, when the war broke out with the mother country enlisted in the First Pennsylvania artillery and was afterward transferred to the Seventh Pennsylvania infantry, commanded by colonel William Irvine of Carlisle, with whose family Mary Ludwig had lived at service. She was permitted to accompany her husband’s regiment, serving the battery as cook and laundress, and when at the battle of Monmouth (Freehold), N.J., her husband was wounded at his gun she spring forward, seized the rammer and took his place to the end of the battle. After the battle she carried water to the wounded, and hence her pet name of “Moll Pitcher”.

Hayes died after the war was over, and she married a second husband of the name of McCauley, and at her grave in the old cemetery at Carlisle there is a monument that bears this inscription:

Molly McCauley,

Renowned in History as “Molly

Pitcher”, the Heroine of

Monmouth;

Died January, 1833

Erected by the citizens of Cumber-

land County, July 4, 1876

On Washington’s birthday, 1822, when Molly was nearly seventy years old, the legislature of Pennsylvania voted her gift of $40 and a pension of $40 per year.