The Only Woman in the Town, and Other Tales of the American Revolution

In April 1775, as British soldiers march toward Concord, every other woman in town has fled. Only Martha Moulton remains, making breakfast for her elderly uncle and burying the family silver before the redcoats arrive. This is the unforgettable opening of Sarah J. Prichard's 1898 collection, a work of historical imagination that recovers the voices women carried silently through the American Revolution. Through a series of intimate vignettes, Prichard traces the small heroisms and quiet terrors of colonial women left to hold everything together while men fought and history happened elsewhere. These are not tales of famous figures or celebrated heroines, but of the ordinary courage required to simply stay: to hide possessions from occupying soldiers, to maintain households amid uncertainty, to embody patriotism in ways that left no monuments. Written by a late 19th-century woman looking back at her nation's founding, this collection does the radical work of placing women inside the story they were written out of. The prose carries period sentimentality, but its heart is fierce: these are the stories history refused to remember, and Prichard refuses to let them disappear.