What Anna Maria Lane Accomplished By Pretending To Be A Man

Publish date: 2024-05-06

One year into the war, Anna Maria Lane fought alongside her husband and other soldiers in the Battle of Germantown. Per Women's History Blog, it was during this battle that Lane sustained a leg injury that left her crippled for life. Before she was injured, it is believed that she might have fought with her husband in the battles of White Plains, Princeton, and Trenton, according to Revolutionary War and Beyond. Following the end of the war, she and her husband moved to Richmond, Virginia where he worked for the public guard and she volunteered as a nurse at the military hospital.

Lane's greatest accomplishment was actually what she achieved following the war. In 1804, as she began to age and have health issues, she petitioned the state of Virginia for a pension due to the fact she was injured in battle as a "common soldier," according to Colonial Williamsburg. It took almost four years, but in 1808, Anna Maria Lane was awarded a pension from the state of Virginia. Even more impressive was the fact that she received two and a half times the standard amount that the other soldiers received. Due to the severity of her injury, the state thought it appropriate that she receive $100 per year instead of just the average $40. Though she died a couple of years later, Anna Maria Lane goes down in history as the only known woman from Virginia to serve as a soldier in the Revolution.

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