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Betty Zane’s legend is growing again in Virginia. A tree on the Yorktown Battlefield, part of a “Pathway to Patriots” by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), was planted this summer and bears her name.
And her story — the only person, man or woman, willing to risk her life to save Fort Henry during a siege in 1782 — is included in the VA250 Mobile Museum, which is traveling Virginia as the Commonwealth celebrates 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, in a section on female Patriots.
But Zane’s popularity has echoed throughout history, in her great-grandnephew Zane Grey’s 1903 historical novel about her, which launched his career.
And in Wheeling, West Virginia, which was Virginia’s far frontier during the Revolution and the site of her act, her legend still looms. It never lost its luster.
There, the name Betty Zane is “very much alive,” and she’s “very well remembered,” said Joe Roxby.
Roxby, a local historian and retired magistrate, has written two books dealing with the Zane family: “Lost Legends of Fort Henry” and “The Heroic Age: Tales of Wheeling’s Frontier Era.”
He said the second siege of Fort Henry was the last time British and American forces faced in combat, in what was the western theater of the Revolution. Fort Henry was unique for its two conflicts, and each produced their own legend “that is the DNA of the town,” which developed around it.
“She stood in the face of adversity,” he said. “With few men to fight, women had to stand in. She stepped in and did things that brave men failed to do.”
The legend
According to the DAR’s public history of her, Zane was born around 1760 in Virginia near the south branch of the Potomac River. At an early age, her family moved to an area on the Virginia frontier that is now Wheeling, West Virginia.
“This was a hostile area due to the taking of the American Indians’ land,” reads the history. “The Zane family helped build Fort Henry in 1774. The garrison was built on a hillside overlooking the Ohio River and was practically impregnable.” The first siege took place in 1777.
Roxby’s text on Zane includes chronology of the second siege: On Sept. 11 and 12, 1782, a large American Indian force, under the direction of the British, attacked Fort Henry. Inside the fort were about 40 men and boys, and 60 women and children, including Zane.
During the second siege, called “The Last Battle of the Revolution,” their gunpowder supply ran out. The nearest source was more than a hundred yards away in her brother’s cabin.
The DAR history concludes, “Betty Zane stepped forward with the simple assertion, ‘I will go,’ and convinced the men that she was the logical volunteer. Young and fleet of foot, she was strong enough to carry an ample supply of powder. Betty successfully made the trip to her brother’s cabin, poured as much powder as she could carry into her apron, and sped back to the fort.”
The DAR records her service in the “capacity of ammunition bearer.”
Projects coordinator with the DAR Veronica La Du said that while “Most DAR established patriots are men… we have a significant number of women as well, and our members and genealogists are looking to add more people and lineages, making it more accessible for women to join through a variety of ancestries.”
A living tribute
To prepare for the semi-quincentennial, the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution is creating an extension to their “DAR Pathway of the Patriots” in Yorktown. The original 76 trees of the pathway are planted at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, and this project adds 250 trees to the second site in Virginia.
Each tree represents an “American Patriot,” whose story is featured in a companion online resource, according to the DAR. Specific members, chapters or states sponsored Patriots for inclusion, and Zane was sponsored by the West Virginia State Society.
The American Battlefields Trust owns the land where the trees are being planted. Communications associate Anna Grace Wenger said the trees are native to Virginia, and include shade, evergreen and flowering trees. There will also be a parking lot adjacent to the grove for easy public access, with the county board of supervisors unanimously approving it last month. The area will include interpretive signs by Civil War Trails, and the DAR is coordinating an America 250 marker.
Zane is one of 19 women among the 250 honored there. The others are:
Elizabeth Beard, Lilly McIlhaney Bowen, Elizabeth Griscom Claypoole (better known as Betsy Ross), Margaret Cochran Corbin, Lydia Barrington Darrah, Sarah Bradlee Fulton, Christiana McGuire Gatliff, Laodicea Dicey Langston Springfield, Sarah Martin Tyonajanegen, Mary Lindley Murray, Charlotte Reeves Robertson, Anna Smith Strong, Kerenhappauch Norman Turner, Mary Ball Washington, Martha Washington, Eleanor Wilson, Hannah Fayerwether Winthrop and Prudence Cummings Wright.
Courageous, but not unique among women
Rosemarie Zagarri, a lauded historian and professor at George Mason University, has studied female Patriots expansively. Her two books about women and the American Revolution are “A Woman’s Dilemma: Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution” and “Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic.”
According to her work, the Revolution changed how American society viewed women, from political non-entities to political beings in their own right, not just because of acts of heroism like Zane’s, but because of their roles in boycotts and support of war efforts.
She said that Zane’s story is just one window into the wider contributions of women during the American Revolution.
“Women who lived in frontier areas … often found that their lives did not confirm to the gender stereotypes. … Women on the frontier had to be able to use a gun, to protect themselves against wild animals, Indian attacks or other intruders,” she said. “Abigail Adams kept a gun, and knew how to use it, while her husband John was away from home during the Revolutionary War.”
She gave another example: when British troops laid siege to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1780, women were trapped there. “The siege lasted a month and women fed the citizens, tended the injured, kept up morale, and supported the troops,” she said.
Women, known as “camp followers,” also traveled with Washington’s troops throughout the war, and acted as nurses, cooks, washerwomen and seamstresses.
“Both men and women at the time widely recognized that made important contribution to the war effort, and were regarded as patriotic and heroic,” she said. “So in this sense, then, the contribution of Betty Zane, while important to her community, was not unique. There were many, many other women like Betty Zane in the American Revolution. The interesting question, at least to me, is about who kept her memory alive for so many years.”
And the answer to that question is: her community.
After the events at Fort Henry, Zane married twice and had seven children. She died around 1828 just across the river from Wheeling, in Belmont County, Ohio, and is buried at the Walnut Grove Pioneer Cemetery.
She’s remembered across borders. In fact, Belmont County holds an annual weeklong Betty Zane Days celebration every August.