Prudence Wright

Prudence Cummings "Prue" Wright (26 November 1740 – 2 December 1823) may have been a militia commander during the American Revolutionary War.

Born in Hollis, New Hampshire, she was the daughter of Prudence and Samuel Cummings and had two sisters and three brothers. Her father was the town clerk. She was a patriot, but much of her family was loyal to the British crown. In 1761, she married David Wright, a private in the American militia. The two had eleven children – David, Prudence, Cummings, Mary, Wilkes, Caroline, Liberty, Deverd, Liberty, Artemas, and Daniel – born between 1763 and 1783; two, Mary and the first Liberty, died in the early 1770s. She joined the Congregationalist church in 1770.

According to a legend printed in 1899, Wright was elected by the townsfolk to command a women's militia known as the Mrs. David Wright's Guard, based in Pepperell, Massachusetts. The group consisted of about 30 or 40 local Patriot women whose husbands were mostly members of the regular militia ordered to march towards Boston after the battles of Lexington and Concord. The women dressed in their husbands' clothes and carried "anything that would serve as a potential weapon", including pitchforks. Wright appointed Mrs. Job Shattuck as her lieutenant and began organizing patrols of the town and the surrounding area. The two directed the arrest of loyalist spies (two of Wright's own brothers) at Jewett's Bridge over the Nashua River in April 1775.

Although women were not to be paid for militia service, in 1777 the town convened a committee to compensate Mrs. David Wright's Guard (who they called Leonard Whiting's Guard) for their actions. Leonard Whiting was a British Army officer and a friend of the two arrested spies.