00:00 - Hey guys it's Ellen here with PCN

00:02 - everybody loves some good folklore

00:04 - personally i do think that that is Taylor swift's best album.

00:09 - What

00:10 - that's not what we're talking about.

00:12 - Ok but what about the Molly Pitcher folklore?

00:15 - the thing is we have no idea if Molly pitcher was a real person or not

00:19 - she could have been multiple different people

00:21 - what we do know is information about a woman named Mary Ludwig.

00:25 - Mary Ludwig, do not ask where the name Molly came from, I have no idea,

00:30 - was either born in Pennsylvania or New Jersey

00:33 - she most likely did not have any formal education

00:37 - because why would anyone want to educate a girl.

00:40 - In her early twenties she married a barber by the name of William Hays who

00:43 - eventually enlisted in the continental army.

00:46 - For much of the women at the time when their husbands enlisted in the army their

00:49 - families came with them to do things such as the laundry.

00:53 - Mary followed William through his training and most likely received the nickname Molly

00:57 - Pitcher due to her constantly filling up pitchers

01:00 - to wash the laundry with.

01:01 - during the battle of Monmouth William was injured

01:04 - Molly instead took his place on the battlefield having watched enough of his training

01:08 - to get a basic understanding of what to do.

01:10 - A fellow soldier in the field with her Joseph Plumb Martin wrote quote

01:15 - how a cannon shot from the enemy passed directly between her legs without doing any

01:19 - other damage than carrying away all the lower part of her petticoat

01:23 - looking at it with a apparent uncertain she observed

01:26 - that it was lucky it did not pass a little higher

01:28 - for in that case it may have carried away something else and continued her occupation

01:32 - rumor has it after the battle General George Washington promoted her to a

01:36 - noncommissioned officer and though she never appeared in battle again

01:40 - she was known as Sergeant Molly pitcher.

01:44 - After William died Mary eventually got remarried but that husband left the family

01:48 - with little to no money Mary eventually got her forty dollars a month veterans

01:53 - pension and lived out her final days here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania

01:57 - where she is now buried in the old Carlisle cemetery

02:01 - next to a cannon and a statue of Molly Pitcher.