Sarah Tarrant
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Sarah Tarrant was a female Minuteman, who on February 26, 1775, two months before the momentous Battles of Lexington and Concord, confronted a British solider head-on in Salem, and of Prudence Cumming Wright, who commanded a patriot band. Wright and fellow female Minuteman Sarah Hartwell Shattuck put on their husbands’ clothes, armed themselves with muskets and pitchforks, and took positions at Jewett’s Bridge over the Nashua River to repel British troops attempting to seize colonial weapons. Sarah Tarrant called out to a British troop trying to find colonial arms in Salem, "Go home and tell your master he has sent you on a fool's errand and broken the peace of our Sabbath. What, do you think we were born in the woods, to be frightened by owls?" When a British redcoat leveled his musket at her she challenged him, saying, “Fire if you have the courage, but I doubt it.” No shots were fired, and the British retreated, playing the same tune that General Lord Cornwallis's British army band would later play at his surrender at the Siege of Yorktown, “The World’s Turned Upside Down.” Sarah Tarrant and Sarah Hartwell Shattuck captured the Tory captain Leonard Whiting during the event.
