5. Margaret Corbin Drive is Named For a Colonial Woman who Fought Against the British

A plaque honoring the heroic actions of Margaret Corbin during the Battle of Fort Washington, 1776.

When you enter the park from the south, coming out of the 190th Street subway station, you’ll first see a traffic circle called Margaret Corbin Circle that opens onto Margaret Corbin Drive which runs northwards through the park. Margaret Corbin from Pennsylvania was one of the female camp supports accompanying the First Company of Pennsylvania Artillery, to which her husband belonged. He fell in battle defending Fort Washington against the Hessian troops, who were hired by the British. She took control of John’s canon, and continued the fight.

Her canon was one of the last still firing in this battle, though she too was wounded. Fittingly, she became the first woman to receive a military pension due to the permanent severity of her battle wounds. She is only one of two Revolutionary soldiers buried at West Point, where her body was moved in 1926. There is a memorial to Corbin and her compatriots inside Fort Tryon Park, erected in 1909