Presentation to the William Penn Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Abington, PA

Since the records were discovered in the late 1970’s, numerous presentations, books, movies/TV shows, and presentations have been made about George Washington’s spies.  These presentations are almost exclusively centered on the MEN (like Nathan Hale) who conducted covert operations for the Continental Army and Continental Congress.  These men, while important, constituted less than half of the intelligence operatives in the American Revolution.

To be a good spy one needs to be unobserved.  In the chauvinistically male-oriented society of 18^th Century England (and by extension Colonial America), women had a decided advantage over men when it came to collecting and transmitting secrets.  Often, they were simply not seen so they could move through polite company, eavesdrop and pass through checkpoints knowing it would be an affront to propriety for them to be bodily searched or challenged.  The best spies in both the American and British intelligence network were women, especially slave women.

The Admiral of the Blue Apron™, in his guise as Revolutionary Spymaster will discuss Women Spies in the American Revolution at the April meeting of the William Penn Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution on April 9 at 1900 at the Abington Presbyterian Church (1082 Old York Rd, Abington, PA 19001) .  Typical, the Revolutionary Spymaster focuses on generic programming on spies, but in this presentation, he will focus not only on the practice of spy craft during the American Revolution, but also the women who were often the unsung, even unknown, heroes of the war.   While there were spies from all corners of society, in this program we will discuss the wartime careers of 10 women who were employed, either by George Washington, General Howe or General Clinton (or in a few cases BOTH SIDES), to collect and transmit key information from within the enemy’s camp in both New York City and Philadelphia.   We will discuss several known spies (most are still unknown to us, even today) and we will discuss how these women were uniquely capable of collecting valuable intelligence and the impact their work had on the progress of the war.

Hands on exhibits on codes and cyphers as well as the Admiral of the Blue Apron’s punchbowl (known to loosen a few tongues) will be available.