The Teenage Girl Who Dined With Washington

“…Made it their study to show me every mark of regard.”

Impetuous might be a good word to describe Margaret Moncrieffe. A 14-year-old runaway, she dined with George Washington on the eve of the British invasion of New York City in 1776.

Washington did not attend the Continental Congress in Philadelphia that year—and therefore did not sign the Declaration of Independence—because as commander of the continental armies, such as they were, he had taken residence in Manhattan, spending his days not with the complexities of political philosophy but struggling with a far more tangible and fearful problem—how to defend the island from a British armada that had filled New York City’s harbor in preparation for a Normandy-style landing of thousands of battle-hardened soldiers.

Washington's task did was far from promising. On July 12—only three days after he ordered the Declaration read aloud to his troops—two British warships left the main body of ships arrayed at anchor. Together they sailed up the Hudson River. One of the vessels had 40 guns, the other 20. Together, as they glided by unscathed, they pounded the city with barrages of cannon fire, smashing buildings, sending cannonballs whizzing down Manhattan’s side streets, and sending Manhattan’s residents running, screaming in terror.

That the feisty Miss Margaret would find herself at dinner with Washington is all the more remarkable because she was the daughter of Major Thomas Moncrieffe…of the British Army, and she desperately wanted to be at his side.

Born in Nova Scotia in 1762, she was a dark-haired beauty. Her “eyes [were] full of witchery,” people said. When she was three, her mother died. For a time she came under the protection of General Gage who commanded all the King’s armies on the continent. She even lived in his home. But her father decreed that she and her brother should be educated at Miss Beard’s boarding school in Dublin, so off she went across the Atlantic, still only three years old.

The next time she saw her father she was eight, and he had a new wife. She hailed from one of New York City’s most prestigious families, the Jays. “I did not like my new mother,” Margaret later said. She would not see either parent for another two years, when her father had her shipped to New York City where he was stationed.

“The heart-cheering smile”

Life was sweet for the next two years, as her father was often at home, and she could “bask in the heart-cheering smile of paternal fondness.” When her stepmother died, her father remarried six months later as was often the custom.

Unfortunately for Margaret, when her father went away, she had to live in the home of her first stepmother’s brother Frederick Jay. He wholeheartedly supported the Revolution. This was intolerable to a teenage girl who adored her soldier father and all that the British Empire stood for. She wrote that she could not abide being “forced to hear my nearest and dearest relations continually traduced.”

With the invasion looming, the Jay family fled Manhattan to the comparative safety of Elizabethton, New Jersey, and then to another village a further 10 miles inland. Margaret could stand the patriot taunts and the separation from her father no more, and when the family was at church, she stole a horse and fled back to Elizabethton where she stayed with family friends.

Desperate to cross back over the river to be closer to her father, she wrote a prominent general in the colonial army Israel Putnam. She knew that he and her father had been friends years before when they were both loyal to the King.

At about the same time, the British commander Lord Howe wanted to engage Washington in peace talks. A small British vessel under a white flag came to shore. Its officer found Washington’s aide Colonel Henry Knox waiting, and he said, “I have a letter, sir, from Lord Howe to Mr. Washington.”

“Sir, we have no such person in our army with that address,” Knox replied, refusing to accept correspondence unless the British acknowledged Washington’s rank, thus implying at least tacit recognition of the legitimacy of his cause.

The next day a second British boat came to shore, also under a white flag. This time the letter was addressed to “George Washington, Esq.” Again, Knox refused to touch it.

On the third day, the boat, again under a white flag, came to shore, and this time the letter was addressed, not to Washington, but to the astonishment of the colonial officers, its recipient was someone they’d never heard of—“Miss Margaret Moncrieffe.”

While preparing for battle, Major Moncrieffe had received word from the Jay family that his daughter had run off. He was desperate to see to her safety and had written the colonials inquiring as to her whereabouts.

Both letters landed on Putnam’s desk at nearly the same time, and he wrote Margaret saying that although he and her father were on opposing sides, he would “with pleasure, do any kind office in my power for him or any of his connexions.”

A day later, Margaret found herself ferried to 1 Broadway, Putnam’s home and the headquarters of the continental army.

The Putnam family gave her a spare bedroom, and the next day an unusually tall man with a most dignified bearing and his plump and cheerful wife came to visit—George and Martha Washington.

Margaret wanted dearly to proclaim her loyalty to King George III, but she thought the better of it, and she later wrote that the Washingtons “made it their study to show me every mark of regard.”

A few days later she found herself invited to a formal dinner hosted by General Washington—this in the midst of the pending invasion. Someone proclaimed a toast to the Continental Congress. Amid much clinking of glasses, Washington noticed that Margaret had not lifted her glass. He frostily said to her, “Miss Moncrieffe, you don’t drink your wine.”

Margaret, true to her father and his country, declared “General Howe is the toast.”

This did not go over well. There was much fussing. Stern reproachful stares were likely directed at her until General Putnam said to Washington “everything said or done by such a child out rather to amuse than affront you.”

Washington turned again to Margaret and said, “Well, Miss, I will overlook your indiscretion on condition that you drink my health, or General Putnam’s, the first time you dine at Sir William Howe’s table, on the other side of the water.”

Thus, the future president proved his leadership skills, averting a minor diplomatic crisis with his Loyalist teenage guest.

Fearing that she was a spy, the Americans moved her to another home, and there she met and fell prey to that most terrible of teenage afflictions—the romantic crush. The object of her adoration? The ever-so-dashing twenty-one-year old Colonel Aaron Burr.

            “To him I plighted my virgin vow,” she later recalled, calling him “the Conqueror of my soul.” Alas, destiny broke them apart, and on August 7 she was rowed over to Admiral Howe’s flagship, the Eagle, by a delegation led by Colonel Knox.

            That evening she was invited to yet another formal dinner, this one hosted by General William Howe, the brother of Admiral Richard Howe. As many as 50 of the most prominent British military leaders and their wives were there. In honor her dramatic arrival, Margaret was asked to make a toast.

            True to her word, she raised her glass and asked everyone to toast to General Putnam’s health. As before, this startled and offended all present, but General Howe made light of her remarks. Knowing that Putnam was elderly and portly, he said to everyone’s amusement, “If he be the lady’s sweetheart, I can have no objection to drink his health.”

What lay in store

If this were a Hollywood story, Margaret would have somehow remained united with her father through military campaigns, dressing his wounds, only to later be reunited with the charming Col. Burr, and they would marry, have children, and through many trials live to old age together on a technicolor farm.

Alas, this is not what lay in store for Margaret Montcrieffe. Her father, not knowing what to do with her and following the practice of the times, arranged for her to be married to John Coghlan, a soldier whom she had briefly met at a dance. She refused. To help her see the error of her teenage ways, he locked her in her bedroom.

At last, against her wishes, she married Coghlan, and he went away to fight. A year later he returned, saying that he had sold his commission, was leaving the army, and together they would return to England via Ireland.

Margaret was the only woman on a troop ship carrying 600 or 700 men, and Coghlan was such a drunken lout that the captain threatened to toss him in the brig if he could not find the decency to treat his wife better, such were the ravings that echoed from their tiny cabin.

When she learned that her husband, like her father, also planned to imprison her until she reformed, she ran off into the Irish countryside. Ultimately, she found her way to London, but her behavior had become something of a scandal. Soon she found General Gage, the former commander of British forces in North America, on her doorstop. He told her that it had been decided that she would be shipped to a French convent where she would live for three years.

Talking her way out of nunnery with the aid of Lord Clinton, a distant friend whose home she had briefly lived in, she returned to London only to receive a letter from the general’s wife saying that her father had disowned her. He would no longer pay her expenses, and she was out of his will.

Resourceful—and beautiful—she became the mistress of a prominent politician. She bore his child. He left her. She took up with an aristocrat who squired her around Europe. When that ended, she became the lover of yet another society gent. He left her and left her with another child who died shortly after birth.

She had two children with her next lover, an army captain. For a time, she thought he would propose to her, but, no, he advised her that he was engaged to wed an aristocratic lady and that, of course, his bride would raise their two children.

Another lover followed as did massive debts. Facing debtors prison, she placed her own obituary in the newspaper, and fled to Paris. The year was inauspicious—1787, just before the French Revolution. Again, her bills mounted. She was put in a French debtor’s prison—along with her two-year-old son. And she was seven months pregnant.

Returning to England, she was put in debtor’s prison in London. There she gave birth, the delivery aided by a young inexperienced doctor. She and her infant lay naked for two days until any attention was given to them.

Upon being released, she learned her father had passed away. Now more creditors pursued her, thinking she had an inheritance. Her beauty long gone, she knew only one way to make enough money to pay her bills—She wrote a tell-all autobiography, naming names, and sharing unseemly details.

Appearing in 1794, it was titled “Memoirs of Mrs. Coghlan,” and it was a hit. However, she did not sell enough copies to pay her bills, and in 1797, she was again imprisoned. Six years later, she was freed. And still in debt. She wrote various luminaries, including the King, seeking aid. None was given.

Again, she was imprisoned. After that, nothing is known of her and her fate.

MORAL: Let prudence temper courage.

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