One New Brunswick woman became something of a worldwide sensation for her remarkable feats fighting in the American Revolution.
Elizabeth Beard first became widely known late in her life, not for her own youthful heroics, but for her sons.
The War of 1812 was then raging. Elizabeth Beard’s third husband, Sgt. Jeremiah Hopkins, and six of her sons; Samuel, Timothy, Robert, Nathaniel and Archibald Woodward, and Nicholas Hopkins, had all enlisted in the 104th New Brunswick Regiment.
Glowing media profiles lauded her as a strong wife and a tough mother. Reporters, however, seemed unaware she herself had fought the Americans, decades earlier.
By then Elizabeth was in her 70s. She had outlived her first two husbands. She had given birth to 22 children, 12 of whom had predeceased her. Her eyesight was by then failing, and she was living in poverty.
It was at that point that her daughter Margaret penned a lengthy letter to Lord Palmerston, the British Minister of War. She recounted her mother’s exploits in the American Revolution years earlier, and asked him to give her a pension, since she had also fought in that war.
The impressed Minister of War mentioned Elizabeth Beard to the British press, and her story was widely published across Britain and Canada.
It was certainly quite a story.
When the American Revolution broke out in 1776, she was married to her first husband, Sgt. John Jasper. They were both aboard the brig Stanley escorting another vessel named Roebuck.
The two British ships were ambushed by three French ships. During that sea battle, Elizabeth manned the cannons, and was even wounded in the leg during that victorious fight.
In 1870, Fredericton MLA William Needham described that battle in a speech: “There was a woman [who] came out to this country on board of a man-of-war, and in the course of the passage the vessel engaged in action. Though there was plenty of [gun]powder, there was a scarcity of wadding. When it was all used up, this woman … took off her petticoat for them to use as wadding.”
Needham contrasted Elizabeth Beard with famous British nurse Florence Nightingale: “For the benefit of this country she went to make the wound instead of covering it up!”
Immediately after her victory, she accompanied some British sailors in landing on Cape May to
forage its forests for food and fresh water.
According to Margaret’s letter, during the landing 22 British sailors defected to the rebels, who were led by Captain Panket. They captured the rest of the British who had come ashore, and were preparing to execute them.
Scottish newspaper The Edinburgh Evening Courant, who in 1817 described her as “a valiant amazon” wrote: “by her means she enabled them to escape. On their way to join the army the party was attacked by the enemy’s light horse. She was fired at and wounded in the left arm. Undismayed [she] took a loaded flintlock and shot the rebel.”
She then took the dead American soldier’s horse. Evidently a savvy businesswoman as well, she later sold the horse to a British officer.
This story mostly lines up with the historical record. T. J. McGuire’s book The Philadelphia Campaign recounts that at Cape May five British deserters joined the Americans under a captain named Plunkett. McGuire writes that the deserters were indeed attacked by two unnamed individuals from British ships named Roebuck and Stanley.
Elizabeth’s first husband seems to have died shortly after. No records of his death survive, though this isn’t unusual for that chaotic time.
The American Revolution dragged on for years. In 1781, Elizabeth Beard appears again, this time in Florida, at the Siege of Pensacola.
According to an 1817 article in the Quebec Gazette, she was then remarried to Samuel Woodward, a private serving in Chambers’ Brigade. During the siege she ”served at the guns and tore off strips [of her dress] and used them as wadding.” The second time, evidently, she appeared in battle tearing up her clothes to keep the cannons firing.
An unlucky cannonball shot struck where the British stored their gunpowder, and the entire besieged fort blew up. The surviving British soldiers and their families –including Elizabeth Beard– surrendered. First the survivors were taken to Cuba, then later moved to New York where they were swapped for American prisoners.
Her daughter wrote that Elizabeth Beard boarded a ship filled with refugees bound for New Brunswick when disaster struck.
She had “embarked upon a transport [ship] with part of Chambers’ Corps. And was shipwrecked on Seal Island in the Bay of Fundy. Near three hundred men, and numbers of women and children, were lost.”
Though the ship isn't named, this is almost certainly referring to the wreck of The Martha.
The Martha was carrying 181 Loyalist refugees (including Chambers’ Brigade) bound for Parrtown (now Saint John) when she crashed into Seal Island, off of Barrington, Nova Scotia. It remains to this day one of the worst disasters in the Maritimes' history, claiming the lives of 113 refugees.
The 68 exhausted survivors of The Martha floated on debris from the ship for two days and nights.
“She suffered unparalleled distress,” Margaret wrote about her mother’s ordeal, “being pregnant with a child in her arms, remained three days on the wreck.”
She was picked up by fishermen and brought to shore, where she delivered triplets. Two of those triplets died fighting the Americans during the War of 1812.
After receiving the letter, Lord Palmerston agreed to pay Elizabeth Beard a generous pension.
It seemed that Fredericton residents already knew of her heroics though. The Royal Gazette newspaper, which was owned and edited by a woman named Anne Mott, had earlier published a lengthy profile of her.
Anne Mott wrote that Elizabeth Beard was “a rare example of a damsel not in [distress], suffering in captivity for want of a protector, but of one, through whose courage and consistency brave men themselves have been supported in danger and succored in distress.”
