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There were women at Fort McIntosh, for the wives, sisters and others followed their men - officers and enlisted personnel alike. Who they were, these brave women who trudged with the columns of troops along wilderness trails, bivouaced with them, kept house in some manner in lonely outposts where the best living conditions were less than desirable, is generally unknown.
We know a few. One was a Margarite Legier whose name appears in the General Orders of November 4, 1778, the day the troops left for the Tuscarawas. Pvt. David McMahon is court martialed for theft, sentenced to 200 lashes, 100 of which are remitted, and forfeiture of private property and pay until she, Margarite Legier, is satisfied.
Another is Sarah Harmar. Col. Harmar, shortly after arriving at Fort McIntosh, wrote to her that he was having a kitchen built and would send for her. That she came, but did not stay too long, is evident by a letter in June of that year in which Harmar writes of sitting in "our old bed chamber, writing by the front window overlooking the Ohio".
Sarah Harmar was not the only woman with the 1st American Regiment. Private John Shaw in his diary records that while recovering from frostbite suffered when he fell into the Ohio, he was put into a barracks room with the sergeant major, Duffy, and his wife, next door the apartment occupied by Col. Harmar and his lady.
It is doubtful if Captain John Hamtramck had his wife with him when he assumed command at Fort McIntosh in 1786. Ten years later, however, she was drowned while descending the Wabash from Fort Defiance to Vincennes, both of which posts had been commanded by her husband. She left two children.
Women were not mere spectators, but shared equally - or maybe unequally - in the hardships of military life on the frontier, doing laundry, cooking, and nursing. Some went into the extreme outposts, for on the strength report of the 13th Virginia at Fort Laurens in January of 1779, are listed three women.
When Col. Daniel Brodhead prepared the 8th Pennsylvania for the long march back to the frontier from Lancaster in June of 1778, he took precautions which ordered:
"A return of all the women of the Regiment to be made immediately, with their names and usefulness in the regiment not but such as appear to be cleanly and industrious in washing for the officers and men will be allowed rations in the future, nor permitted to remain with the regiment. . . . In the future no women of the Regiment is to demand more than six pence for washing out an officer's shirt on pain of being drummed out."
They became casualties, too. In the bloody defeat of St. Clair in 1791, among the killed of the 2nd Infantry and the lst Battalion of Artillery, were fifty women - many mutilated.