“A JULY 4 WOMAN Handy Betty Hager Helped Our Forefathers to Win Independence” Doing research for my current project, I happened across two newspapers with this article about Betty Hager: (“New Ulm Review, New Ulm, MN, 6/23/15 & “Harrisburg Telegraph,” Harrisburg, PA, 7/03/15: Here’s the texr:
“Patriotic service in the American Revolution was rendered by Handy Betty Hager, known also as Betty the Blacksmith, who refitted guns and artillery for patriotic armies. Betty was a natural mechanic whose latent abilities were developed in the employ of Samuel Leverett, a blacksmith-farmer living near Boston. Prior to the battle of Concord the patriots of the surrounding country had been preparing themselves for the conflict for months. Guns of all types -matchlocks, flintlocks, smoothbores, blunderbusses and what not, some of which had not seen service for three or four generations – came piling into the Leverett shop, and, while Leverett himself could be observed by any passing Tory to be busily engaged in shoeing horses, his unsuspected assistant was working in a secret chamber making the neighbor’s antiquated old firearms serviceable once more. Betty kept up this volunteer work throughout the whole course of the war, never accepting a single copper for her labor. To Betty and her employer likewise belong the credit of putting the first captured British cannon into action after they had been spiked by their former owners.” The image from my collection is the statue of Deborah Sampson, who fought and was wounded in the Revolution disguised as a man. (Location:Sharon Public Library, Sharon, MA.)
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