Women in the American Revolution

Caroline Heppner and Evie Unsworth Senior Division Category: Website

We chose our topic, Women In the American Revolution, because had studied the American Revolution last year and we both found it to be an intriguing topic. We wanted to research a specific part of the revolution that is not typically focused on. We thought of looking into just the contribution of women to the revolution, and we both agreed that we liked this topic. Our teacher recommended a book about the subject and after reading it we both thought this would be a good topic. We conducted our research in a few different ways. We did some of our research online by finding websites and journal articles on womens involvement in the American Revolution. Our teacher recommended two very helpful books on the subject, and the authors of these two books, Carol Berkin and Mary Beth Norton, are the people we decided to interview because we decided they were our leading historians on the topic. We went to the town and school libraries and found about ten books on our topic as well. The key sources for the project were two books, Revolutionary Mothers by Carol Berkin and Libertys Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women by Mary Beth Norton. These two books contained information about almost every aspect of our project. They were a great overview of womens contributions during the American Revolution and helped us to compose our graph about home front contribution and our graph about the political causes of the war. Also these sources helped us to compose the pages on our website about the long term significance of womens involvement in the American Revolution, including how womens

involvement led to women wanting education and suffrage. As a result, we decided to interview both Mary Beth Norton and Carol Berkin in order to gain more information about our topic. Our interviews yielded more important information which we used throughout the project, especially in the women in history page of the website. The project relates to the theme of Revolution, Reaction, and Reform because womens participation in the American Revolution was a revolution for women in itself. It was a time period when men viewed then as property, and only useful for taking care of children and working in the kitchen. Women were not usually involved in wars because it was considered the mans job, until the Revolutionary War. Women being involved in the American Revolution brought a reaction from both men and women and then reform occurred because women wanted to be educated and have the same rights that men have. The womens suffrage movement and its eventual success had its root in the involvement of women in the American Revolution. Over time women were granted the same rights as men.