ANNA MARIA LANE AND SALLY ST. CLAIR: REVOLUTIONARY WAR HEROINES

With the 4th of July holiday fast approaching, here is another seasonal post from Balladeer’s Blog. When it comes to women who dressed up as men and served as soldiers during America’s Revolutionary War, Deborah Sampson gets most of the attention. Here’s a look at two other women who disguised themselves as men to serve in the war.

ANNA MARIA LANE (c1755-1810) – Pictured above left, this courageous woman and her husband John Lane joined America’s Continental Army in 1776. Anna Maria saw action in Georgia, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

During the 1777 Battle of Germantown, Mrs. Lane was injured and was partially lame for the rest of her life from that injury. Still, she and John continued serving in America’s rebel army until 1781. In 1808 Anna Maria was granted a special pension of $100.00 per year, which was two and a half times greater than the normal soldierly pension.

Lane’s award cited her for how she “in the Revolutionary War, performed extraordinary military services at the Battle of Germantown, in the garb, and with the courage of a soldier.”

SALLY ST. CLAIR – Her birth year is estimated as 1750 and she is said to have died in battle at Savannah during December of 1778, or October of 1779 or sometime in 1782. There is more folklore than established fact about Sally, unlike Anna Maria Lane and Deborah Sampson.

Sally was from South Carolina and served in either Francis Marion’s army or Benjamin Lincoln’s. George Pope Morris’ poem about Sally St. Clair romanticizes her as a Creole woman who disguised herself as a man in order to serve in the army along with her romantic partner, supposedly named Johann W. Jasper.

The poem depicts Jasper being unaware of Sally’s masquerade until she was killed and he came upon her body.