What did Revolutionary War soldiers eat? Colonals, Loyalists, and Allies on Both Sides?

Nancy A. May: Hello everybody, I'm Nancy May, a lifelong Connecticut

Yankee and brand new Floridian

Hi, I'm Sylvia Frantz, a fourth-generation Floridian.

My family came to Florida before statehood in the 1820s, so anyone who came after

1845 would be considered a new Floridian.

We're starting off America 250 celebrations with a nod to what our

Revolutionary War soldiers and allies ate.

Nancy A. May: Yep, and welcome to this episode of Family Tree Food Stories.

Before we start, would you do us a favor?

If you go to Podcast.FamilyTreeFoodStories.com,

follow the show, share it with a friend, and tell us more of your stories.

Because, well, that's how we're gonna get better for you and for others, and us too.

So on that note, Sylvia, let's jump in, because there's a

guy I need to tell you about.

A soldier, a real patriot, like some of our own ancestors might have been, and he

kept a diary the entire Revolutionary War

Oh, I already love him since documentation

is priceless in genealogy,

Nancy A. May: Okay, so this guy wrote down the best meal that he ever had in months,

and I mean he really wrote it down with passion, like a teenager with a crush

What could that possibly be?

Nancy A. May: You're not gonna guess.

It was pumpkin seeds

That's it?

The whole meal eloquently defined pumpkin seeds?

Nancy A. May: Y- yeah, apparently.

It was just a simple handful of pumpkin seeds, that he found

in the bottom of a horse trough

that is so sad,

No.

That can't be right

Nancy A. May: Yep, It seems so wrong, yet, yet so right.

But he said, and I quote directly from his notes, "It was the most delicious feast."

Out of a trough?

A horse trough?

Ick.

I really love horses, but that's taking it a tad bit too far

Nancy A. May: Yeah, probably talking green, slimy at the bottom too.

I think I'll look at the bottom of the bucket next time I take a, a look

Ew.

desperate times needed desperate measures, and we consider ourselves

culinary curious, but still, ugh

Nancy A. May: Honestly, that's just the kind of thing we're getting up to around

here because every meal has a story and every story's a feast and every kitchen

has a secret, even if it is in a trough

And every horse trough apparently has

a feast or at least a snack.

Nancy A. May: Yeah.

Okay, , so here's the big picture that we're talking about

today, and for the next month.

We're starting with this big month, because we're celebrating

the 250th - anniversary of the Declaration of Independence

It's been 250 years since we said we're free on paper,

Nancy A. May: Yay.

was the easy part.

It was like receiving an invitation to a birthday party.

Actually winning the Revolutionary War, , that took eight years, eight

years of cold, broke, hungry men with the help of courageous women

I might add somehow pulling it off

Nancy A. May: Yeah.

I love that.

In fact, nobody puts that part on the sizzle reel

So today's topic, what did the soldiers really eat?

The Continental Army, our French, Spanish, and Dutch friends who

helped us, and yes, the British and German soldiers called Hessians too.

Same war, very, very different plates

Nancy A. May: So we're gonna find out who ate what and who

ate well and who ate the bugs.

Yep, who ate the bugs, and others that we shouldn't probably say out loud

So buckle up.

It's about to get very interesting here

Nancy A. May: Very interesting.

Stick around.

There's a woman later on in this episode who takes the guns away from three

enemy soldiers and using nothing but a turkey dinner to, well, entice them

I'm picturing a frozen turkey dinner here or

just Revolutionary War style?

Nancy A. May: Well, exactly Revolutionary War style.

I'd leave the Butterball at home.

But you'll have to wait for that one, because that's Just a little tease

worth the wait, I promise.

. Quick thing is if, this is your first time with us, go ahead and hit the follow now.

This is one of four on the food of the Revolutionary War.

You don't wanna miss where the rest of this goes

Nancy A. May: Okay, let's just get into it, Sylvia, because we're, been enough of

the promo here, but , here's what gets me about the whole topic of the Revolutionary

War and food, especially for our soldiers.

, Our soldiers were supposed to eat really, really well

uh, define on paper

Nancy A. May: Okay.

Congress wrote out daily food plans for each soldier, kind

of like they probably do today.

A pound of meat, a pound of bread or flour.

There were peas, beans, and milk when they could get it, and a drink

every day, beer or cider, even vinegar so they wouldn't get sick

Wait, That's better than I have on most Tuesdays

Nancy A. May: Yeah, right.

Or Wednesdays, maybe even both.

On paper it reads like a feast, but almost none of it actually showed up

None of it.

How disappointing.

Nancy A. May: I know, right?

The truth is that barely any of it was ever delivered.

Can you imagine being hungry and never getting food?

And here's the part that got me.

Everybody thinks that the British starved us out.

They didn't have to.

We did that ourselves because our supply chain was so broken

We all heard that The revolutionary tale is

that wagons are pulled by mules.

The roads were bad or nonexistent.

and Drivers switched routes halfway through and just lost track of

where they were even headed.

Food sitting out in the rain, rotting before it got there.

One supply officer wrote that he didn't even have a single barrel

of flour to hand out, not one.

Nancy A. May: And that wasn't all bad luck either

Nope.

Some of it got stolen on purpose.

There's a real stretch of the war that historians call the Forage War.

Armies raided each other for hay, cows, and grain wagons.

Food wasn't just hard to find, it was a target

Nancy A. May: So our soldiers fought over hay.

That's pretty dramatic and also pretty pathetic

It sure is, but it was true.

People got shot over hay and it didn't get lost in a ditch somewhere.

It got sold off of the back of a wagon by the same men who

were supposed to deliver it

Nancy A. May: Oh, that's even so… I can't even begin to explain that one.

They're stealing their own food so they can sell it back to their own guys?

Yes.

Exactly.

And it happened everywhere.

Congress was furious about it, but they couldn't really do anything to stop it.

Nancy A. May: So when flour finally showed up late and, hmm, as I

understand, also full of bugs

Yes, literally full of bugs, weevils and maggots.

were baked right into the bread.

Using much of that flour, they made something which they called a fire cake.

That's just flour, water, mixed, and then slapped into a hot rock by the fire.

No yeast or sourdough starter.

Half the time there was no salt.

Ugh.

Nancy A. May: Yeah, I know, right?

And bugs.

Boy, that actually sounds like papier-mâché without the paper.

Yuck, and bugs

Oh, wait, they called it free

Nancy A. May: Well, please tell me that wasn't a joke because that's really,

like, I, I'm like totally grossed out.

I can't get this out of my mind

It's barely a joke

Nancy A. May: You know, it's kind of funny that you mention bugs.

All right, well, I gotta plug here.

Because we did a whole show, or whole episode, about how to eat

bugs back in August of last year.

So if weevil's are your thing, you might wanna listen in to that episode.

We'll put a link into the show notes just in case you wanna give a bite to Sylvia

Well, I'm not eating a bug because, well,

you're fascinated by bugs, Nancy

Nancy A. May: Oh, come on, Sylvia, humor me.

but note for the record.

, So let's move on and talk about the entire camp and how it was set up.

Here's what it looked like.

There were six guys to a squad, and there was one pot between all six guys, and it

basically never got cleaned or changed because they always were on the move.

They just kept it going on and on and on.

More water, - more salt pork, more flour right up to the top.

Whatever was left over week after week after week, they just kept piling it in

Ew, that - is disgusting

Nancy A. May: Honestly, I'm not so sure it was that bad because, well, I'm

gonna let you in on a little secret.

That's what Bob does for us when we have… He calls his

endless winter pot or stew soup

Excuse me?

Nancy A. May: Yep, my Bob runs an Instant Pot throughout the cold winter

months, even here in Florida when it can drop down to 20s overnight.

You know that one.

It's the same pot week after week, and he rarely empties it.

He just keeps adding stuff to it.

He could add sherry one week.

Now, there is some meat in there.

Roasted garlic may be the next.

A little bit of basic running of something new, some vegetables, and

he's got his own revolutionary stew war pot, and he didn't even know it.

It was the endless pot of soup.

Well, that's what we call it at least

250 years and men still don't wanna do the dishes

Nancy A. May: Nope, and he's proud of it.

But it's actually pretty good.

I haven't died yet.

uh, , and here's another thing.

Our Revolutionary War patriots didn't use forks.

Although forks and soup probably aren't a good combo, unless it's a stew.

But forks were considered a little too fancy and upper class, and a

soldier just cut the meat right out of the pot with the same pocket knife

that he used for everything else.

Think, I don't know, cleaning off the off the bottom of your shoes?

Yuck.

The fork was the snob at the table this whole time.

I've heard stories that in my family did exactly the same

thing in southwest Florida while tending their cattle in the 1800s.

They would just clean off their knives by wiping it on their denim jeans.

Nancy A. May: Yeah, we do that now too.

The fork has always been a snob though.

But I have to ask you one thing that I think everybody's heard about, but

I didn't hear about this one before.

What about the soup shoes?

The shoes I wish I could tell you it was just a story

Nancy A. May: So it's not a story, it's real?

Actually, it is real.

At the worst camps, Valley Forge and Morristown, men wrote about

boiling their shoe leather, tree bark, sometimes even camp dogs.

Don't repeat that to your pups.

Nancy A. May: No.

BB and The Mighty Quinn want to put it on record, they are totally disgusted.

They are sitting at our feet under the dinner table, and will not be

the main course for dinner this week

They should be growling at you now because

that's not a normal hungry night.

That's a type of nothing has come for days kind of hungry when you boil your shoes

Nancy A. May: Yeah, for sure.

And quick question, because if somebody listening to this is wondering,

how do we even know all this stuff?

Well, here's where it comes from.

It comes from notes and journals that were saved from family members passed down

through the generations, their complaints, and honestly, yeah, even their trash.

The trash

Nancy A. May: Yep, the trash.

So you probably heard in school over the years as a kid that archeologists

dug up these old campsites and found animal bones that have been cracked

open for the marrow, you know, the soft part inside, the kind that's

being served on gourmet menus in restaurant today, and skulls opened

for the brains, also on gourmet menus.

I'm not eating that.

But nothing was wasted.

Trash always tells on people

Trash really does, the good, bad, and disgusting in this case.

Nancy A. May: Yes.

And disgusting or gourmet, depending upon who you're talking about.

how much they charge.

Nancy A. May: That's right.

And speaking of digging things up, I lived right next to one of these

old camps for 30 years back in Redding, Connecticut, and walked those

trails many a time with our pups.

And there's a place called Putnam Park, which is also known as

the Valley Forge of the North

Wait, that was your backyard?

I'm curious, did you find any musket balls?

Nancy A. May: No, we didn't find musket balls there, but there is

one in a tavern up in Ridgefield that's stuck in the wall still today.

But actually, it was in our backyard.

3,000 soldiers in the winter of 1778 , camped right in Putnam Park, and food

was supposed to be supplied in a storage area not too far from them down the road

right next to the food, so they must have

been happy campers or soldiers

Nancy A. May: Well, not quite.

Turnips alone cost $2 to $3 a bushel

Oh, that's even more than Publix today

Nancy A. May: talk about inflation.

And for these guys, they had to pay for some of their own food.

That was an entire month's pay, and they wanted to eat.

So they decided to go hunt down the local farmers.

But those local farmers were not gonna feed these guys for free.

So the Reading farmers, to save themselves and their families' stomachs,

they stored and hid , their own food in their basements, including animals

Are you talking pigs and cows in the basement with people?

Nancy A. May: I am pigs and cows in the basement with people.

Grandma's food jars, maybe even grandma's rhubarb wine.

We've talked about that.

Hopefully that helped with the animal stench.

Nancy A. May: Right.

And winter turnips and a very nervous pig all sharing space in the basement.

I don't know how they got the cows down there, but freedom did come at a very

expensive price and a very hungry one.

and that same soldier who ate pumpkin seeds from a horse trough, well, he was

supposedly camped right there in Reading too, and he complained that the beef was

barely edible, and described it in the way that, well, the steaks might actually

have said, "Neigh"," instead of moo"

Of course it's that same guy

Nancy A. May: Isn't it always the same guy that's complaining, uh, then and now?

Exactly.

And weirdly, starving wasn't the most dangerous food problem out there

Nancy A. May: What could be worse than starving?

Monotony, eating exactly the same thing every single day, salt,

meat, flour, and no vegetables ever.

That gives you scurvy, which we most commonly think of

as a disease for sailors.

It's a sickness that you get when your body doesn't get enough vitamin

C, and it was the most common illness of the whole war, which surprised me

Nancy A. May: And nobody knew why they were getting sick, right?

Nobody knew why.

They knew vegetables somehow helped, but vitamin C itself wasn't

actually identified until 1932.

They were treating a sickness that they didn't even know the name of

Nancy A. May: And so that actually worked?

Whatever they happened to try, vinegar, dried beans, sauerkraut,

and something called spruce beer, which they learned from the Native

Americans, and it actually worked.

Nancy A. May: Woo-hoo, spruce beer.

They boiled spruce tree needles and twigs with molasses.

It tastes like pine cleaner, but it's loaded with vitamin C. It saved

lives, yet tasted like Pine-Sol

Nancy A. May: Well, I'm gonna challenge you on that one.

. Because now we have a second show that we did a few years back, well,

now two years back, two Decembers back, which is all about how to

eat your leftover Christmas tree.

And guess what?

Pine needles plays a part there, of course, too, in holiday food

And I have drank and enjoyed pine needle Christmas tree tea

Of course you did.

Nancy A. May: Yes.

Next time I'll add some bugs.

But this sets us up for the Hessians because sauerkraut is a

story that is truly unbelievable

Oh, it's so good.

Hold that thought.

That's exactly where we're headed

time to talk about the actual enemy, the British.

You'd think the most powerful empire on earth actually eats like kings.

You know, tea and crumpets

Nancy A. May: Yeah, you would think.

Woo-hoo, tea and crumpets

Their food had to cross an entire ocean in a wooden barrel first.

By the time it got there, the salted beef was so old and

dark they called it mahogany.

They had to boil it three times just to get a bite off of it, and their hard

biscuits were tough enough that soldiers joked they could crack a rat's tooth on it

Nancy A. May: Ugh, I've just been to the dentist, so I can't

even begin to think about that.

And I believe they also had bugs again.

You're just fascinated by bugs.

Yes, bugs again.

You tap it on the table to knock them loose or dunk it in something hot so the

bugs would float to the top and you'd skim your own dinner off the surface.

Nancy A. May: See, you do know how to eat bugs.

But both armies somehow still have that comfort in a weird way

because they both ate the same thing, a different kind of protein

Y- we know that misery loves company, and apparently

it doesn't pick sides either

Nancy A. May: Nope, and Empire ruled the seeds.

Still love their bugs.

They thankfully lost it badly

Nancy A. May: Okay, so now let's get on to the cabbage and the Haitians.

But a quick heads up first, because when you hear the word Haitian, I automatically

think of the movie villain, right?

And these were the German soldiers, not movie villains necessarily, and

they were from a place called Hesse.

Now the Brits paid the German rulers to rent out their soldiers, and

tens of thousands of them fought for the British side during the war

So you're talking hired guns basically?

Nancy A. May: Yeah, hired soldiers, hired guns.

They weren't fighting for a cause, sadly.

They were fighting for a paycheck, which is probably why their food and

supplies were just as messy as ours

Well, you know, a rented army still needs to eat

Nancy A. May: yes, they still need to eat dinner, and they loved their cabbage.

Germans after all.

A lot of cabbage

So they liked it more than just a topping on a hot dog or on a

Reuben sandwich, , which is my favorite.

Nancy A. May: Yeah, I don't think they had those back then, but, cabbage was

a total comfort food for these guys, and it also just happened to keep

scurvy away, even though they didn't know that that was part of the deal.

On Christmas night in 1776, Washington crossed the Delaware , and surprised

the Hessian camps at Trenton, and captured almost 1,000 of them

And what happened after the battle?

Nancy A. May: Well, the continental soldiers go through the German

camp , and find their winter stored food supplies loaded with, you

got it, cabbage, and barrels and barrels and barrels of sauerkraut

Hidden cabbage.

Hmm, that's a little intriguing

Nancy A. May: Well, a little I would say, and as the story goes, they'd been to the

local New Jersey farms asking the farmers to save it for them, the cabbage that is.

So after the win, there's no meat left for our side, and for a while, the continental

army is eating all that captured German sauerkraut, minus the hot dogs

We win the battle and the prize is cabbage

Nancy A. May: I know.

Pretty pathetic, right?

Hey, gotta eat

Nancy A. May: but the Germans were right about needing the

veggies, though, annoyingly so

Okay.

Before the break, get ready because wait until you hear what 2,000 cows

from Texas have to do with this war

Nancy A. May: There's our cue.

Hang tight because we'll be right back

And we're back

Nancy A. May: So where were we?

Oh, yeah, right.

So almost everybody else is eating better than us, our patriot soldier friends

So while our guys were chewing on buggy fire cake,

we had allies helping us, and they were absolutely not eating like us

Nancy A. May: no, they weren't unfortunately.

But let's start with France

Yes, our French friends.

I like starting with France for the obvious reasons.

France shows up in 1780, General Rochambeau with thousands of troops

landing in Newport, and they bring their whole food culture with them.

On the march, they build real bread ovens.

At one camp in Chatham, New Jersey, those ovens were baking about

3,000 loaves of fresh bread a day.

I just can't imagine.

Nancy A. May: Right?

We both baked bread.

I can't imagine doing that either, but 3,000 loaves, and our guys one

camp over were eating their own shoes.

Now, that's pretty pathetic

And there's a twist.

Those ovens were partly a trick

Nancy A. May: A trick?

Washington and the French cooked it up together.

Yes, pun intended.

all those ovens made the British think the whole army

was staying put for a long time.

Meanwhile, the troops were actually sneaking south to Yorktown.

They tricked an empire with a very large bakery

Nancy A. May: I can see it now or I can smell it now, the aroma of

bread wafting through the fields.

Pretty sneaky, almost as bad as, like, when you walk into the

grocery store and the first smell that you get bread , right?

Or chocolate chip cookies.

Yes, - it was very sneaky bread.

But the sad part of it that the two armies marched more than 600 miles side by side,

and yet still ate completely separate meals, and our guys didn't even enjoy

a single fresh loaf of French bread.

Nancy A. May: Oh, sad

But they loved our ham.

There's a note from a French officer who wrote about trying Virginia ham.

He said, "We cured it almost as good as the French back home."

Nancy A. May: That's so French and so obnoxious.

Yes, it is.

But the French also would gather wild food along the way, fresh

greens, wild herbs, real salads.

The colonist made fun of them for it, and said the French ate weeds and frogs.

I wonder if that's why they still call them frogs today, the French

Nancy A. May: No, right?

But let me guess, weeds and frogs.

The French guys didn't get scurvy either

No, they didn't.

Just like today, salad wins every single time

Nancy A. May: Honestly, I'd have eaten the salad too.

I'm not dying on a hill for a Firecake, for sure

No, but he should.

Because that's not a hill, that's a grave and a stomach ache

Nancy A. May: Yeah.

Okay, it's my turn now.

Let's talk about Spain.

I get to tell this one because I didn't see it coming

Oh, please tell me everything

Nancy A. May: All righty.

So here we go.

Bernardo de Gal- Bernardo de Galvez, I love that name, was the Spanish

governor based in New Orleans, and he was secretly moving guns and

gunpowder up the Mississippi River to help our patriot guys, sneaking past

the British ships the entire way.

And to feed his own troops, he had soldiers drive thousands of cattle all the

way from Texas, 2,000 longhorn in total.

That was back in 1779

Wait, all the way from Texas?

Nancy A. May: All the way from San Antonio east to Louisiana,

driven by Spanish cowboys.

Yee-haw.

The vaqueros, I think that's how you pronounce it.

it's often called the first official long-distance

cattle drive in Texas history

so this is basically where the whole Texas cattle drive thing begins

Nancy A. May: Yeah, pretty much so.

though true to this entire episode, , the records can't

prove the cattle ever made it

Of course they didn't.

Nothing in the Revolutionary War shows up on time

Nancy A. May: Of course.

and here's a little something to bend your spoon or fork lore, as we've said before,

right?

We're gonna, patent that.

We're gonna trademark

Nancy A. May: I think we should do, yeah, that.

Because people picture the cowboy as a Texas and, well, California thing.

the oldest cattle in America, they actually came ashore first in

Florida , in 1521, Ponce de Leon brought seven Spanish cows off a

boat, and their great-great-great grand calves, we'll call them,

basically became the original longhorn

. Sylvia France: So the whole American cattle story actually starts in Florida

more than 250 years before any of this.

We had cowboys before a cowboy was even a word.

They actually called them cow hunters and later crackers, and

those are actually my people

Nancy A. May: And Spanish soldiers ate very well.

Thick stews made with rice and chickpeas, garlic, and olive oil of

all things, plus oranges and lemons straight from Florida and the Caribbean.

Sign me up for that dinner

Oh, me too garlic, olive oil, and fresh fruit I

would've signed up for that alone, especially being , a good Florida girl

Nancy A. May: Meanwhile, we're over here proud of ourselves for

finding flour that's only got a little bug in it here and there

So basically for the Spanish, there was

no scurvy for them at all

Nancy A. May: No, basically none, and they didn't have to worry about

cracking a rat's tooth either.

Here's the part that nobody taught us in school.

There was a real fight right here in Florida in 1781 at the Siege of

Pensacola … Where Galvez again led one of the biggest and most mixed

battles of the entire Revolutionary War.

, Soldiers from all over were fighting side by side

And that mattered up north somehow?

Nancy A. May: It did.

It mattered a lot.

. He kept so many British troops busy along the whole Gulf Coast they

couldn't go help defend Cornwallis in Virginia, and that helped us

win the final battle up in Yorktown

A battle in Florida helped to win the war of Virginia.

I'm so proud.

Nancy A. May: I'm proud to be a Floridian now, too.

But here's the twist on top of the twist: Florida wasn't even on our side

I know.

That's what I heard

Nancy A. May: So Florida was British back then, split into two colonies,

East Florida and West Florida, and you can honestly call them the

14th and maybe the 15th colonies.

They got invited to join the rebellion and sent people to the Continental

Congress, and then after attending, they said, "Eh, no thanks," and stayed loyal

to the king the entire Revolutionary War

So our own home state turned down the Revolution

Nancy A. May: I know, how rude, flat out.

When the word of the Declaration of Independence reaches St. Augustine,

people there were so angry that they burned effigies of John Hancock and Sam

Adams right there in the town square

Loyal in rugged Florida, yet still helped the

colonists win just a bit sideways

Nancy A. May: Always a little bit sideways here in Florida, to

be honest with you.

Right?

Florida was such a headache for the Brits to hold on to that it tied up

the troops and ships right down here.

So

the soldiers never made it north to fight

. Sylvia France: Two Florida girls could have told them all of this, and the Dutch.

Did I tell you that the Dutch side of my family settled Manhattan in the 1620s?

Nancy A. May: The Dutch.

Can we just stick to the Revolutionary War?

I'll try.

It's hard.

The Dutch ran the warehouse basically.

There's a tiny island off the Caribbean called Sint

Eustatius, named the Golden Rock.

It became the biggest smuggling spot of the whole war.

Gunpowder, supplies, rum, sugar syrup, all of it got sent to our side.

Some of that gunpowder was hidden in barrels marked tea or rice so the

British wouldn't bother checking them

Nancy A. May: smuggled gunpowder in a tea barrel.

That's straight out of a spy movie

So France brought the bread ovens, Spain brought

the cattle and the fruit.

The Dutch ran a secret supply depot

Nancy A. May: And nobody was sharing recipes

. Sylvia France: Nobody.

It was all about who could get food and supplies to the fight first.

Nancy A. May: And the wagons again

Oh, goodness, you must love wagons.

Always the wagons.

We go back to it.

Nancy A. May: Before we wrap up, we keep saying they cooked,

but who was really they anyway?

Right.

Because left on their own, soldiers were not great cooks.

Unlike today, most men were not- taught to cook because it

was considered a woman's job.

There are plenty of stories of men getting sick just from trying to

cook and eating undercooked meat

Nancy A. May: And an army able to take down an empire beaten

daily by a undercooked steak

the real kitchen experts were the camp followers, mostly women,

wives, widows, and mothers who traveled with the army for the entire war.

Washington complained that they slowed down everyone, but he soon

realized that the whole army fell apart without them, which we both

know is true in many households today.

Nancy A. May: Yeah, for sure.

although I do know a few good cooks who are guys, but they knew how to

turn almost nothing into a real meal.

Vinegar they used to soften up old, tough salted beef, wild garlic and dandelion

leaves to cover up meat that was, eh, already going bad, maybe even green, and

bread that was baked in ovens that they dug straight into the grounds themself

And for that, cooking, taking care of the sick, doing laundry,

they were paid half a normal ration.

Kids who traveled with them got a quarter of one.

Most of them did not receive the paperwork that would qualify

them to be official Patriots.

Less than 10% are documented since they did not receive a pay stub.

I am fortunate to have found Anna Rickenbacher, my female Patriot, while

I was actually looking for her husband

Nancy A. May: Half a ration?

Kid's only getting a quarter.

First of all, that's child labor.

Second of all, women are still getting only half, well, maybe

three-quarters of what men are.

but that'll be for another story, and keeping the whole army running

in the shadows at the same time

And there's one story I want everyone listening

to remember by name, Polly Cooper

Nancy A. May: Ooh, tell me about Polly

Oh, she was an Oneida woman.

Right after the brutal Valley Forge winter, they set out in late April.

She and about 40 other women roughly walked 250 miles carrying

baskets of corn to the starving army

Nancy A. May: 250 miles on foot.

I better get my Nikes going.

But carrying them to people she didn't even have to help

Correct.

And she didn't just drop off and leave.

She stayed and taught the soldiers how to actually cook the corn the right

way so it wouldn't make them sick

Nancy A. May: That's a saint, and she wouldn't take any payment, as I understand

Not a cent.

She said, "You don't get paid for feeding hungry people." She

sounds like a Mother Teresa to me

Nancy A. May: I agree.

And then there's Nancy Hart.

Gotta love that name, don't

another Nancy.

You know, we have Nancy's yogurt, now we have Nancy Hart

Nancy A. May: Nancy is French, but anyway.

And honestly, it's the closest thing to the high story that we've got here today.

It's a story that's been told in Georgia for over 200 years.

Nancy was a tall and tough patriot with a quiet temper.

Yep, another Nancy trait.

And a group of loyalist soldiers, burst into her cabin one day.

They had shot her last turkey, and then ordered her to cook the darn thing

So does she actually cook it?

Nancy A. May: Well, temper in control, she does cook it, and she serves the turkey,

pours them plenty of her homemade, brew.

And then after they're eating and bragging she's quietly sliding

their guns one at a time out through the back wall in her cabin

She's my kind of girl, taking their guns away during dinner.

That's so clever

Nancy A. May: and sneaky.

But by the time they noticed, she was holding a gun on them, , she

keeps them there at gunpoint, likely shotgun, until help arrives.

A whole county in Georgia is still named after her,

And it's the only one in the entire state named for a woman.

And you know what?

That's really saying something, since there are 154 counties

in the state of Georgia

Now, whether every single detail is exactly true after

200 years of retelling, who knows?

Nancy A. May: but that Georgia story has been a proud story told for 200 years.

And either way, never underestimate who's holding the spoon, the

shotgun, or who's named Nancy.

Never.

I won't.

Nancy A. May: For sure, right?

Okay, if you only remember three things from this episode today, here they are

One, the British weren't what starved the continental army.

It was a broken supplies chain.

The enemy showed up plenty of times, the food didn't

Nancy A. May: Two, our allies basically won the food war even without trying.

French bread, gotta love it, Spanish cattle and fruit, and the Dutch

gunpowder hidden in a tea barrel.

they fed and armed a revolution while our guys were eating their shoes

And three, nobody did this alone.

Hungry soldiers, the women who traveled with the army, and Oneida women who

refused to be paid, they all helped build a country with whatever they had on hand

Nancy A. May: So this month, especially on the 4th of July, tell somebody

about the gunpowder hidden in a tea barrel, and the woman who held the

Brits at gunpoint over a turkey.

And that's honestly why we do all this

Share the wild untold stories that sound like

fiction but are actually true.

That's how people actually remember history.

Nancy A. May: I love that.

So that's the soldiers, the French bread ovens, - the cabbage that was

captured, borrowed corn, and then occasionally a… I'm stuck on this

shoe story, I have to tell you.

I know you are, just like the wagons.

And somehow all of that, they fed a whole country into being

Nancy A. May: And here's the question that's been on my mind the entire episode.

If that's what the soldiers ate, what's happening back on the home front?

Exactly.

Next time, it's the home front.

What did regular families eat while the men were off freezing and fighting?

Farmers, shop owners, mothers running entire households alone.

That's episode two or deux.

Nancy A. May: Yes., So come and join us over on Facebook between episodes

and tell us what you know , and what you've been eating on your table,

whether it's the corn side or the wheat side or maybe the bug side.

Leave us a review, and send this episode to a family member

who maybe makes the gravy

I'm sure they'll get it

Happy cooking and happy experimenting

Nancy A. May: bye-bye for now.

Happy eating and happy 250th birthday, America