1744-1832, American Revolutionary heroine whose real name was Mary Ludwig Hays or Heis, b. near Trenton, N.J. As the wife of John Hays or Heis, she carried water for her husband and other soldiers in the battle of Monmouth (1778) and earned her nickname. The legend that she manned her husband's gun is apocryphal and possibly rose from confusion with Margaret Corbin . After her husband's death, she married George McCauley, and in 1822 she was pensioned by Pennsylvania.
Bibliography: See W. S. Stryker, The Battle of Monmouth (1927).
