Seeking sources regarding female spies during the American Revolution

There are several good books on Agent 355 of the Culper Spy Ring who worked for Washington.  She was never identified by name, but is documented in several places.  This blog may point you in the direction of credible research.

https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/revolutionary-spies

Dear Abby Quinn,

Thank you for posting your request on History Hub!

We suggest that you review the National Archives (NARA) web page for the The American Revolution to learn more about the Revolution-era records in NARA’s holdings.

You may find some relevant information in correspondence and other records from Revolutionary War figures. The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) website Founders Online may be a good place to start, as it provides records from George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (and family), Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, and it includes over 184,000 searchable documents, fully annotated, from the Founding Fathers Papers projects. Other resources like Mount Vernon’s Spies, Dead Drops, and Invisible Ink and the University of Michigan’s Spy Letters of the American Revolution may also be useful. Plus, you might wish to contact the Library of Congress Manuscript Reading Room for more information about their holdings.

We also located several resources related more broadly to espionage during the Revolutionary War that might be helpful in locating information about women who were spies, including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence web page the Birth of American Counterintelligence and the Culper Spy Ring; Stony Brook University’s Primary Sources - George Washington and the Culper Spy Ring; and the American Battlefield Trust’s Spies of the Revolutionary War. We also suggest that you review articles such as the Army NCO Journal’s The importance of spies to Washington's success, the Smithsonian Magazine’s The Myth of Agent 355, the Woman Spy Who Supposedly Helped Win the Revolutionary War, and California State University San Bernadino’s Camp Followers, Nurses, Soldiers, and Spies: Women and the Modern Memory of the Revolutionary War. You may find relevant information and citations in publications like these that lead you to further sources.

Finally, we suggest that you search WorldCat for relevant historical monographs and archival collections. You may also wish to search the Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC) Cooperative for pertinent resources. Your local public or university librarian should be able to assist you with these resources.

We hope this is helpful. Best of luck with your research!