Molly Pitcher, Cannoneer card art from Lost Chapters (Quartz, Character) — Card art: Molly Pitcher, Cannoneer

Molly Pitcher, Cannoneer: Quartz Character

Molly Pitcher is a legend, but it grew from real women who carried water and helped serve cannon during the American Revolution. The woman most often named is Mary Ludwig Hays, who was with her husband's artillery company at the Battle of Monmouth on June 28, 1778, though historians still debate how much of the famous story is hers.

Cost: 1 crystal
Type: Character · Free Spirit
Power / Health: 1 / 1
Color: Quartz (Founders & Revolution)
Rarity: Uncommon
Set: Liberty & Lightning (Set 1)

Lightning 1 (when played, deal 1 damage to an enemy character).

Battlefield water-bearer who stepped up to the cannon when her husband fell, proving revolution was not just a man's game.

Real history

The real history

The legend: at the Battle of Monmouth in New Jersey, on a scorching June 28, 1778, a soldier's wife carried water to the gun crews. When her husband fell at his cannon, she took his place and kept it firing. In some versions George Washington thanked her or made her a sergeant.

The record: "Molly" was a common nickname for Mary, and no single documented woman used the name Molly Pitcher. Historian Linda Grant De Pauw has described her as a persona built from many women's stories. Many women followed the Continental Army, doing laundry, nursing the wounded and bringing water, and some helped at the guns.

The woman most often identified as Molly Pitcher is Mary Ludwig Hays, born in 1754. Her husband served in Captain Francis Proctor's company of Pennsylvania artillery, and she followed the army with him. A soldier at Monmouth, Joseph Plumb Martin, later wrote that he saw a woman serving an artillery piece the whole time, even after an enemy cannon shot tore away the bottom of her petticoat. He did not name her or say that her husband was hurt. No military record shows Washington promoting her. In 1822 Pennsylvania granted Hays a pension of $40 a year for her service, and she died in Carlisle in the early 1830s.

Another candidate, Margaret Corbin, took her husband's place at a cannon when he was killed at the Battle of Fort Washington in 1776. She was badly wounded, and in 1779 Congress granted her a pension. Her story is well documented, but it happened two years before Monmouth.

In the end, the name Molly Pitcher honors many women whose wartime service went mostly unrecorded.

Sources

Will the Real Molly Pitcher Please Stand Up?, National Archives, Prologue Magazine
Molly Pitcher and the Battle of Monmouth, American Battlefield Trust
Mary Ludwig Hays, National Women's History Museum
Celebrating All the Molly Pitchers, Library of Congress, Folklife Today

Checked against these sources on October 2, 2026. Spot a mistake? Report an error. How we check facts.

Game lore (invented)

In the game's story

In the game's invented story, Molly arrives in Marginalia from a hot battlefield in 1778, still carrying a water pitcher, and her living page in the Archive is blurred at the edges, as if several women's stories were written over one another. In the Cogwarrens she watches Nib Sparkwhistle load his Gemdrop Cannon wrong, takes it from him and hits a target at two hundred paces. She now commands his cannon crew.

In Lost Chapters' frame story, history's heroes fall into an invented world called Marginalia. That story is fiction; the history on this page is real.

How the card plays

Molly Pitcher, Cannoneer costs 1 crystal and is a 1/1 Quartz Free Spirit. She has Lightning 1: when you play her, she deals 1 damage to an enemy character of your choice. It is small, but it lands the moment she arrives.

Use her to pick off 1-health characters and tokens, or to finish an enemy that survived a fight earlier in your turn with 1 health left, since damage wears off at the end of the turn. She is also a cheap body to play before Paul Revere, whose on-play Swift lets her charge the same turn. Diametrically Opposed, Foes is more removal that pairs well with her extra point of damage, and George Washington, Freeworld Founder gives your other characters +1/+1, turning her into a 2/2.

Playable in decks led by George Washington, and by any Traveler Leader whose colors include Quartz.
In the Washington starter deck (2 copies). Deck code: LC2-BhoCgAKBAYIBgwGEAYUBhgKHAYgBiQGKAYsBjAKNAY4BjwGQAZEBkgGTAZQBlQGWAZcBmAGZAZoCmwGcAZ0BngGfAaABoQFBjA
A deck holds up to 3 copies of this card.

Questions about Molly Pitcher

Why was she called Molly Pitcher?

Molly was a common nickname for Mary, and women often carried water to soldiers and gun crews in battle. One explanation is that soldiers simply called out for Molly and a pitcher when they needed water.

Where is Molly Pitcher buried?

Mary Ludwig Hays, the woman most often identified as Molly Pitcher, is buried in the Old Graveyard in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. A statue of her as Molly Pitcher was put up at her grave in 1916.

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