Margaret Kemble Gage
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Margaret Kemble Gage (1734-1824) was the wife of General Thomas Gage, who led the British Army during the American Revolutionary War, and is said to have spied against him out of sympathy for the Revolution. She was born in East Brunswick Township, New Jersey.
[edit] Patriot Spy
Histories such as Paul Revere's Ride and history-based novels such as Rise to Rebellion have controversially suggested that she was sympathetic to the colonial cause and may have supplied the rebels with military information. In particular, she supposedly warned Joseph Warren on April 18, 1775 that her husband's troops planned to raid armories at Lexington and Concord, leading to Paul Revere's famous Midnight Ride. Quoting Paul Revere's Ride:
We shall never know with certainty the name of Doctor Warren's informer, but circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that it was none other than Margaret Kemble Gage, the American wife of General Gage. This lady had long felt cruelly divided by the growing rift between Britain and America. [1]
Among the contemporaries who suspected Margaret to be a spy was her own husband, who had her sent back to the family estate in England in the summer of 1775 to avoid further embarrassment.[1]
[edit] Family life
Margaret Kemble was the granddaughter of Mayor of New York City Stephanus Van Cortlandt. She was the daughter of Peter Kemble, a well-to-do New Jersey businessman and politician, and of Gertrude Bayard.
Margaret and Thomas were wed on December 8, 1758. Their first son, the future 3rd Viscount Gage, was born in 1761.
Margaret Gage's daughter, Charlotte Margaret Gage, married British Admiral Charles Ogle on April 22, 1802 and died in September 1814.
Gage Road in East Brunswick, New Jersey, the town of her birth, is named in her honor.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Fischer, David Hackett (1994). Paul Revere's Ride. Oxford University Press, 96. ISBN 0-19-509831-5.
