Ann Cooper Whitall

Who was Ann Cooper Whitall?

Ann Cooper Whitall was a prominent Quaker woman in early America.

Ann Cooper was born in Woodbury, New Jersey. She married James Whitall. During the American War for Independence, Whitall stayed in her house, even though British warships were firing cannon in that direction during the Battle of Red Bank. A cannonball did crash into the very room where Whitall sat working at a spinning wheel. She moved the spinning wheel down to the basement and kept working.

The battle was a victory for the colonists, and afterwards Whitall opened her house to wounded soldiers—American and Hessian. She gave them herbal medicines and bandaged their wounds. She is called the Heroine of Red Bank for her actions at that time.

Whitall kept a diary starting in about 1760 that contains important historical insight into the lives of people in the Red Bank area. She died in 1797. Her remains are interred along with her husband's at the Friends Burial Ground in Woodbury, New Jersey. The mansion they lived in is at the Red Bank Battlefield in National Park, New Jersey.

Ann Cooper Whitall's brother, John Cooper served in the Continental Congress in 1776.