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Some historians have called the American Revolution a “Farmer’s War” due to the many yeoman farmers and poor laborers who filled the ranks of the Patriot army.¹ The concept of a “Farmer’s War,” however, should also highlight the critical role women played through their efforts planting, cultivating, and harvesting crops at home. This agrarian work at home was just as essential to the war effort as that of militiamen. While men were away in service, women’s efforts in the fields fed their own families and the Patriot army.

In respect of men’s duties at home during the harvest season, North Carolina Militia regiments often drafted men for a term of three or nine months. In reality, farming was a year-round obligation, and the many tasks of farm life could not wait for men to return home from the service to fulfill them.² Women who had previously assisted in farm responsibilities alongside their husbands, brothers, and fathers now found themselves as independent farm managers with families, armies, and the American economy dependent on their success.

Although not subjected to military service, farming women were not immune from the threats of war. Women might carefully nurture a growing crop only for the army to appear at their doorstep at harvest time and seize it. Despite these many challenges, not only did women manage to keep their families and homesteads running, but they also cultivated and nurtured grain crops and livestock that fed the Patriot army.³ Through an informal system of cooperation, rural women relied on one another and managed their homesteads. Below are some examples of how some North Carolina women undertook new responsibilities on the farm during the Revolutionary War.

Rachel Rogers was no stranger to managing a farm when she married Frederick Debow in Caswell County in 1777. Growing up in Orange County, Rachel had often participated in the yearly harvests at her parents' orchard, where the community gathered together to help pick apples and boil them into cider.

By the time her husband Frederick joined the service, Rachel was well prepared for the many duties of being a rural farmwife. In her pension application, she recalled how she and an unnamed African American woman she enslaved were sowing a crop of oats near Cane Creek when they heard the distinct sound of cannon fire in the distance, likely stemming from a skirmish around the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Despite the sounds of violence in the distance, they continued to plant their crop, for there would be nothing to eat the following winter if they did not get the family's fields seeded soon enough.

Throughout the course of the American Revolution, Ruth Edwards' husband John was away performing military service for fifteen months. Unable to depend on her husband for support, Ruth found herself left at home with four children, one still an infant and the eldest no older than seven years old. In spite of her circumstances, Ruth made do and taught her oldest son William how to hold the plow while she directed the team of livestock. During John's absence, Ruth and her children seeded and harvested two years worth of crops.

Ruth Edwards' signature mark. Courtesy of National Archives.

In 1780 Anna Guest found herself alone on her farm on the Yadkin River in Wilkes County. Holding Squire, her newborn infant, Anna had to tend to her growing crop through the spring and summer while her husband William was away in service with the Wilkes County Regiment of the North Carolina Militia. Although William came home occasionally, Anna frequently went without seeing him for months at a time. As Anna later reflected in her pension application, she "had to work and make a support... and do the best she could."

Prior to the war, the intensive nature of farm labor had often united many farm families within a community. When the time of year came for plowing or reaping, families like the Jenkinses and their neighbors helped one another in a spirit of cooperation, gathering together at each other’s homesteads to help thresh wheat or pick fruit from the orchards. These collaborative community networks became even more important during the American Revolution. While their husbands were away, neighborhood women like Sarah Jenkins assisted one another in the routine tasks of childrearing and farm maintenance. Not only was Sarah responsible for growing her own crops, but she also upheld her husband's promise that the Jenkinses would help tend to their neighbors' crops too.

Mary Bailey was about seventeen when her older brother John came home with a soldier's uniform and told the family that he'd enlisted in the Continental Line. While John was away in service for the following three years, Mary's father depended on her to perform many kinds of manual labor on the farm including plowing the fields and harvesting the crops. All the while, Mary also helped care for her younger siblings.

When Mary married Randolph Yarborough in 1781, she moved to her own farmstead in Halifax County, North Carolina. There, she continued to assume a lead role in farm management while her husband was away in service and, later, recuperating from wounds he sustained during the war.

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