Group to restart search for war hero’s remains

Error discovered when grave disturbed in 2016

Where is the body of Captain Molly? Revolutionary War hero Margaret “Captain Molly” Corbin was long thought to be buried beneath her granite monument at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.

The Daughters of the American Revolution moved her remains there in 1926 from an unmarked grave nearby. But it’s now clear they removed the wrong remains.

The mystery lingers as West Point plans Tuesday to honor the largely forgotten woman who stepped in to fire a cannon after her husband was killed in battle.

And that bothers Corbin’s admirers in the DAR. Members of the history and genealogy-minded group are leading a new effort to find Corbin’s grave as they shine new light on the hero.

“Nineteen-twenty-six was kind of unfinished business. And so we want to make sure that we close that,” said Jennifer Minus, a DAR official who was a West Point cadet in the early ’90s when she learned about Corbin.

In 1776, Corbin was 24 years old and following her husband’s military unit, likely cooking and cleaning for the soldiers. She took an artillery position after her husband was killed during the Battle of Fort Washington in Manhattan and was hit by grapeshot. She was left with a grievous shoulder wound.

Corbin died in 1800 at 48 and was buried in a modest grave, likely near West Point. By the time the DAR decided to honor Corbin with a reburial in 1926, any marker on the 126-yearold grave was gone.

Relying in part on passed-down information from locals, the DAR pinpointed Corbin’s grave a few miles south of West Point. The disinterred remains were placed in a silk-lined casket and driven by hearse to the storied cemetery in West Point.

But in October 2016 excavators working near the monument disturbed the grave. That led to hightech tests on the exhumed remains. Tests showed the skeletal remains belonged to a male.