Anna Maria Lane was severely injured at the 1777 Battle of Germantown, depicted here in an 1857 image. (Image via Wikimedia Commons)
In the May 1928 issue of the Richmond Chamber of Commerce’s Richmond Magazine, the publication’s editor, John Archer Carter, offered a $30 award ($560 today) for a facts-only essay about Anna Maria Lane.
“Listen, you debunkers,” Carter challenged readers. “Here is a heroine, or this writer knows naught of heroism. The story which shortly follows is based entirely on yellow papers in the archives of the Virginia State Library. It is shockingly lacking in data. But no false festoonery, no romantic glamor of untruth is wanted.”
While researching pensions granted by the federal and state governments to Revolutionary-era veterans, Carter discovered a roster compiled by Lt. Peter Crutchfield, “A List of Noncommissioned Officers & Privates, discharged by act of Assembly from the service of the public guard in Richmond Jan. 1808.”
Crutchfield notes of Lane’s husband, John: “Served in the Revolutionary War from 1779 till its termination — then at Point of Fork [the state arsenal then in Columbia in Fluvanna County] during the whole of the Establishment there, & transferred to the Public Guard. His wife wounded in the Revolutionary War in which she served as a soldier. From this wound she has not recovered.”
Editor Carter didn’t receive any essays, but he wrote a piece for the Daughters of the American Revolution’s magazine.
In 1978, archivist E.M. Sanchez-Saavedra, pursuing research for a compilation of Virginia’s Revolutionary military units, came across her. While he found only tantalizing clues, he published his findings in the Richmond Literature and History Quarterly under the title “The Trooper Was a Lady.”
In 1988, historian Sandra Gioia Treadway took up Anna Maria’s story in the Virginia State Library and Archives publication Virginia Cavalcade. Treadway, like those before her, found in the state pension grants of 1808 that she received $100 for life, two-and-a-half times greater than amounts given to other veterans. As the act of the General Assembly describes, this was because she, “in the revolutionary war, in the garb, and with the courage of the soldier, performed extraordinary military services, and received a severe wound at the battle of Germantown.”
Poorly kept and missing records leave most of her life a mystery. Further, no account of her service by either a comrade or descendant is known to exist. And when she and John signed pension receipts, they marked with an “X,” signifying illiteracy. But her military career can be partially reconstructed through her husband’s own, as well as an 1819 account offered in petition for a federal pension.
John, probably born in New Hampshire in either 1726 or 1727, would have been around 50 years old when he joined the Continental Army in 1776. He had likely already married Anna Maria, born around 1735. They had a daughter, Sarah. Treadway explains that, “with no other means of support, she may have decided to camouflage her sex and enlist in her husband’s unit,” the Connecticut Line, commanded by Gen. Israel Putnam.
Many “women of the army” worked as cooks, seamstresses or laundresses due to the lack of organized personnel to conduct these duties. In August 1777, Gen. George Washington complained that they “are a clog upon every movement” and ordered only essential women to follow the troops. It’s in this context that Anna Maria puts on the uniform to serve as a frontline combatant.
Treadway posits that Anna Maria joined in September 1777 as part of 900 reinforcements for Washington, who wanted to attack the forces of British Gen. William Howe camped at Germantown, near Philadelphia.
Historian Harry M. Ward, in his book “For Virginia and For Independence,” considers that by the Battle of Germantown the Lanes are brigaded in the Virginia Line. Like the morning fog that Washington’s army entered on Oct. 4, 1777, what happened next is obscured. Anna Maria sustained a grievous wound during the battle that permanently disabled her. Ward points out that she could’ve fallen during the opening moves along the Schuylkill River, amid “friendly fire” with Gen. “Mad” Anthony Wayne’s troops or while in a fighting retreat.
Either Anna Maria left the line after her secret was revealed during treatment (if it was indeed a secret), or she accompanied John when he joined Benjamin Lincoln’s army in 1779. John was wounded and captured in October during the failed Franco-American siege of Savannah.
Following a prisoner exchange, John was then transferred into Maj. John Nelson’s Light Dragoons. In 1782, he’s assigned to Charles Dabney’s Virginia State Legion and pulled garrison duty in Yorktown, Hampton and Richmond. Next year, after the legion disbanded, the Lanes went into the state guard based at Point of Fork. They remained there for 17 years. Anna Maria, living there with Sarah, did laundry and other chores for subsistence pay.
A historic marker was erected in 1997 for Anna Maria Lane on North Ninth Street near East Franklin Street. (Photo via Find a Grave)
The armaments storage moves to Richmond in 1801 at the Virginia Manufactory of Arms, situated at the end of 5th Street between the canal and the river. The state guard followed, a group of 68 mostly old and invalid soldiers that includes Anna Maria and 75-year-old John. They are temporarily housed in the state penitentiary until rudimentary quarters are built near where the Bell Tower now stands in Capitol Square. John’s assignments included cleaning and packaging weapons and painting artillery carriages.
Anna Maria volunteered as a nurse to the men under the Superintendent of Health Dr. John H. Foushee. He writes in January 1802 on her behalf to Gov. James Monroe that, “as the old woman is lame, and has discovered a disposition to assist the sick as far as she is able,” she requests some “moderate compensation.”
The governor and council approved the request and paid her a modest stipend. By 1804, Anna Maria’s age and physical problems caused her to quit nursing. John’s health isn’t much better; he’s put to sweeping floors but became too infirm even for that. The General Assembly then halved the Public Guard. John is among the discharged.
Most of these men are 30-year veterans but destitute. The next governor, William H. Cabell, appeals to Speaker of the House Hugh Nelson for pensions. Cabell also highlights Anna Maria, who is “also very infirm, having been disabled by a severe wound which she received while fighting as a common soldier, in one of our Revolutionary battles, from which she has never recovered and perhaps never will recover.”
Treadway figures that a committee hears Anna Maria’s case because the legislators somehow learn her full story. They decide on Feb. 6, 1808, to give John $40 in quarterly installments for the rest of his life, and Anna Maria receives $100. They both receive an immediate grant of $40.
On June 13, 1810, at around age 75, Anna Maria died. Her final resting place is unknown.
John, barely able to survive without her income and despite assistance from his daughter and friends, spent his remaining days at the Richmond City Poorhouse on Shockoe Hill.
In 1818, Congress enacted a small allocation for Revolutionary War veterans. At age 93, and unable to walk, he lived four years after successfully filing for the pension. He died on July 14, 1823, and is buried in Shockoe Hill Cemetery, but the exact location isn’t recorded.
The application for a Shockoe Hill Cemetery headstone for John Lane mentions that his wife, Anna Maria, was a “heroine at Germantown.” (Image via Find a Grave)
In 1936, the DAR sponsored a marker in Shockoe to recognize John. On the application card’s “Name” section, the spouse description “husband” is replaced by a handwritten “his wife,” and typed afterward is “Anna Maria Lane heroine at Germantown.” The humble stone, though, doesn’t include her.
Inspired by Treadway’s research, historian and author Marvin K. Heffner in 1988 started a considerable effort to memorialize Anna Maria’s life.
On June 18, 1997, a state historic marker was dedicated in her name and placed by the Bell Tower where earlier stood the crude barracks of the state guard.
