“I Heard the Roar of the Artillery”: Sarah Osborn Travels with the Continental Army

Background: In 1780, Sarah Matthews Read was a servant in the household of a blacksmith in Albany, New York, when she met and married Aaron Osborn, a blacksmith and Revolutionary War veteran. Without Sarah’s knowledge, Aaron reenlisted in the Continental Army and insisted that is wife travel with him. Sarah ultimately agreed to "volunteer" for the duration of the war, working as a washerwoman and cook. This account comes from a deposition she filed in 1837, at the age of eighty-one, as part of a claim under the first pension act for Revolutionary war veterans and their widows.

In about one day, we reached the place of encampment about one mile from Yorktown. I was on foot as were the other females. My attention was arrested by the appearance of a large plain between us and Yorktown and an entrenchment thrown up. I saw a number of dead Negroes lying round, whom I was told the British had driven out of the town and left to starve, or were first starved and then thrown out. I took my stand just back of the American tents, say about a mile from the town, and busied myself washing, mending, and cooking for the soldiers, in which I was assisted by the other females; some men washed their own clothing. I heard the roar of the artillery for a number of days, and the last night the Americans threw up entrenchments; it was a misty, foggy night, rather wet but not rainy. Every soldier [built] for himself, and I afterwards went into the entrenchments. My husband was there throwing up entrenchments, and I cooked and carried in beef, and bread, and coffee (in a gallon pot) to the soldiers in the entrenchment.

Source: Record Group 15, Records of the Veterans Administration, National Archives, Washington, D.C.