- She was a patriot in every sense of the word.

She was also a wife and a mother living in Savannah as the colonies made their march towards war.

It was her work helping Patriots organize that earned her the ire of the crown.

This is Marked!, a series that zooms in on Georgia and it's backstory, one historical marker at a time.

I'm Maiya Ma and I'm here at an outnumbered historical marker to tell you the story of a woman who is one of many examples of the Patriot cause, the fight for independence and the reliance on those who never fired a shot.

Throughout the history of time, when you look at any military conflict, there's always those who step in not to pick up a weapon, but to help pave a path to victory long before shots are fired.

It's the ones who help plan, who help organize because they believe in a cause.

And as we've mentioned here before, that was certainly the case during the American Revolution and here in Georgia.

The push for independence was a all hands on deck, help however you can operation.

- The fight for independence was all encompassing.

And there's a ton of work that needs to be done before we even get to Lexington and Concord.

And in Savannah specifically, there are a lot of stories that get overlooked because their stories aren't splashed on the front page.

In the middle of all that's happening in Savannah politically, socially, there's a woman named Jane Cuyler.

- Something that's important to point out here.

There is no image of Jane Cuyler that exists.

Sitting for a portrait during those days was reserved for politicians and the wealthy.

Jane Cuyler was none of those.

And there's not a lot about her in the history books either.

- So there's little known about Jane prior to all of this, but what we do know just comes from genealogical records.

She's born Jeanne Latouche in New York around 1738.

- Jane's family is French, and the French were a huge patriot ally.

They lent money, troops, naval support, all kinds of stuff.

And that likely has something to do with her sympathies to the Patriot cause.

And those sympathies will soon be firm devotion.

We'll get to that.

But what we know about Jane, the woman, is that she is one of a kind.

- She's also well educated.

According to the reports, she's a musician, she speaks multiple languages and that is very uncommon for women in this era.

- And the descriptions of Jane are glowing too.

She's described as quote, an extraordinary woman, a great beauty.

By 1768, she's married to Teleman Cuyler and they have at least six children.

And the Cuylers move to Savannah from New York.

- And according to the records, in 1772, Teleman dies.

- So she's highly educated and she's bilingual, which are keys to success for what she needs to do after her husband dies, which is run a business.

So during this time, cities like Savannah and Charleston are gonna have a lot of family run taverns, typically with extra rooms upstairs.

So it's like a tavern and an inn.

People are coming in and out on ships, they are coming in just temporarily or they're making a pit stop and going somewhere else, or they're moving into those cities for opportunity.

And so Jane gets in on this.

She is at the corner of Bull and Broughton, right in the mix of things right in the heart of Savannah.

And it's not long before she moves to Bay Street.

- The exact location here on Bay Street isn't quite clear.

But this is where Jane really carves out her place in the revolutionary effort.

It's where Jane opens her doors welcoming in the drumbeat of royal resistance.

Jane is a patriot.

- What's going on is a heavy groundswell of opposition to the British.

We're talking about devotion to the no taxes without representation crowd, opposition to tyranny, all of that.

But this is a period where not everyone is on board with that cause.

There are still large pockets of people who are loyal to the British Crown, and you might not know where your friends or neighbors land on that issue.

And you can't talk about the American Revolution in Savannah without talking about what we now call the Liberty Boys.

- The Liberty Boys.

They were the southern arm of what's known in the North as the Sons of Liberty.

In Boston, it was men like Samuel Adams and Paul Revere.

Here in Savannah, the Liberty Boys had a lot of familiar names.

Joseph Habersham, Archibald Bulloch, George Walton, just to name a few.

- And these are the guys who are really at the forefront of the Patriot cause in Savannah.

They are staunchly against the king at this time, and they are an absolute problem for the British.

They're very well coordinated and they're also very good at making a lot of noise about being discontent with the things going on that the king is doing.

And their specialty was theft.

They had no problem with stealing a thousand pounds of gunpowder from the British and redistributing it to the patriot side.

- And the most brazen of these robberies took place in May of 1775 when the Liberty Boys broke into a British ammunition magazine.

- And the following day, governor James Wright meeting with the Georgia Council of Safety issued a reward for those responsible.

But what Governor Wright doesn't know is that some of the men on the council are Liberty Boys and were some of the guys who actually robbed the place.

- These were the same Liberty Boys who a month later would celebrate the birthday of the King by erecting a Liberty Pole, basically a middle finger in the eye of the king and all of his men.

- It's important to stop here for a minute because this is where Jane Cuyler needs to get her proper due.

She wasn't a member of the Liberty Boys, but the organization, the planning, the logistics of what these men would do, all that planning is done at her house.

In a lot of ways.

It's the beating heart of the resistance.

And this is all a risky proposition for a woman in those times.

Her son Henry was a part of the Liberty Boys, and that meant Jane was in the fight too.

- And it's Jane who opens her door to them and she says, look, y'all need a place to strategize and organize and let's do it here.

Jane's not the only one who opens our doors.

In Savannah, there's a large network of taverns, and especially in Savannah, the biggest one that we know of is Tondee's Tavern.

Word gets out that Jane is one of the bigger hosts of these meetings.

It's a pretty decent sized city, but word is still going to travel, especially in those close political circles.

In the eyes of the British, Jane is a traitor.

And in the eyes of the king, this is a brazen act of treason.

- By the end of 1778, Savannah has fallen.

It's firmly in the hands of the British, and that spells trouble for the Patriots of the day.

Living here in Savannah during that time, especially for those who aren't loyalists is terrible.

- Now, as long as the British are in control of Savannah, governor James Wright is looking to punish those who he thinks is responsible for these treasonous acts.

And Wright starts issuing arrest warrants and one of those arrest warrants is for Jane Cuyler.

But Jane, according to the historical documents, she was one step ahead of the governor.

She sort of figures that the authorities are gonna be after her.

So she gets out of town.

- She manages to outrun the governor, and that means Jane Cuyler is a fugitive.

But after Jane has opened her doors to those fighting for independence, they give her safe passage and help her out of town.

- She's not just gonna like sneak out and flee.

She actually has a group of armed continental soldiers escort her.

She has this entourage of soldiers that get her to Charleston safely where she can hide out and avoid the arrest.

- At the end of the day, she gets out of town just in time and the arrest warrant remains unfulfilled.

She escapes these treason charges, which could have brought her a punishment of death, and she never sees a day in jail.

At some point, Jane leaves Charleston and goes back to her native New York.

- That move back to New York is gonna cost some money, and Georgia's actually gonna pick up the tab because Savannah is indebted to her for what she has done.

And so they're going to foot the bill.

And she lives out her life there with her brother-in-law's family until she passes away around 1799.

And when you look at the Jane Cuyler story, there's a couple of things that stand out.

She wasn't in Georgia very long, only about 10 years or so.

- But here's the thing, it was probably the most pivotal 10 years in Georgia history and Jane was deeply involved in it.

This is where the story, as brief as hers was, and as little information as we have about it is really important.

- And there's a lot of bold names circulating during this time, McIntosh, Hall, Walton, Oglethorpe.

But you don't really hear about Jane Cuyler, even though there's a lot of people like her that are out on the periphery.

And they're also very, very important because they're the ones who enabled guys like that to operate.

The American Revolution, just like the Civil War, just like both world wars, have had people like this.

They're not on the battlefield, but they are fighting the battle.

And the story of American independence in a lot of ways cannot be written without the story of people like Jane and the bravery that she showed.

- The real story of American independence and how we arrive there has a lot of authors and women like Jane or Nancy Hart or any number of others are oftentimes overlooked, unseen, but not today and not here.

The devotion of what women like Jane Cuyler believed and the bravery they displayed is as much the Georgia story as it is the American independent story.

I'm Maiya Ma, and we'll see you next time.