Biography of Abigail Hartman-Rice

By Cara Conley
February 2, 2026
HYS’s artistic interpretation of what Abigail most likely looked like

Family Background

Maria Appolonia Hartman, known in adulthood as Abigail, was born on September 4, 1742, according to the Rice family Bible, to Johannes Hartman and Anna Margaretha (Margaret) Moses. Johannes and Anna Margaretha were German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania as part of the mid-eighteenth-century German Lutheran migration. The Hartman family arrived in Pennsylvania in 1750 and relocated to Chester County by 1753, establishing a farm near Yellow Springs in the Pikeland region. Abigail was raised in a German-speaking Lutheran household within a close agricultural and religious community where families relied on one another for farming labor, worship, and survival.

The Hartman household was shaped by frontier conditions, including land clearing, church formation, and shared labor among neighboring families. Abigail formally entered adult church life on June 26, 1756, when church records list Maria Appolonia Hartman at the age of fifteen. Her father, Johannes Hartman, remained a respected figure in the local community into the Revolutionary period, with his farm located only miles from the Valley Forge encampment. Abigail’s brothers were active during the war, most notably Peter Hartman, who served as a militia officer and recruiter and was involved in transporting supplies and escorting sick soldiers from Valley Forge to Yellow Springs.

In 1757, Abigail married Zachariah Rice, a German-born millwright living in Pikeland Township. Together they established a long-term household near Pickering Creek, close to Yellow Springs. Abigail bore approximately twenty-two children over the course of her marriage, seventeen of whom survived into adulthood. Her adult life was defined by sustained domestic labor, child-rearing, and community responsibility. Contemporary descriptions portray her as physically strong, capable, and warm-hearted, traits necessary to manage such a large household.

Abigail’s life intersected closely with that of Christina Schneider Hench, born in 1720, the wife of Johannes Hench, who owned and managed a neighboring farm in the Yellow Springs area. During the American Revolutionary War, both women lived and worked within the same emergency landscape created by Yellow Springs Hospital and Washington Hall, major Continental Army medical facilities. Christina Hench’s son, Lieutenant John Hench, born in 1750, later married Margaret Rice, Abigail’s daughter born in 1762, binding the Rice and Hench families together through both wartime service and marriage.

Biographical Timeline

September 4, 1742

  • Maria Appolonia Hartman was born to Johannes Hartman and Anna Margaretha (Margaret) Moses, as recorded in the Rice family Bible. She was born into a German Lutheran immigrant family that would later settle in the Pikeland region of Chester County, Pennsylvania.

1750

  • The Hartman family arrived in Pennsylvania as part of the broader German immigration to the colony, seeking land and stability within established German-speaking communities.

1753

  • By this year, the Hartman family had relocated to Chester County and established a farm near Yellow Springs, where Abigail’s childhood unfolded amid agricultural labor, church life, and frontier settlement.

June 26, 1756

  • Church records confirm Maria Appolonia Hartman, then fifteen years old, marking her formal entry into adult church life within the local Lutheran congregation.

1757

  • Abigail married Zachariah Rice, a German-born millwright living in nearby Pikeland Township. Based on her recorded birthdate, she was approximately fourteen or fifteen years old at the time of her marriage.
  • The couple established their household near Pickering Creek, close to Yellow Springs, where they would reside for decades and raise a large family.

1762

  • Abigail gave birth to her daughter Margaret Rice, who would later marry Lieutenant John Hench, the son of Christina Schneider Hench and Johannes Hench.

1777

  • When the American Revolutionary War reached Chester County, Abigail’s home lay in immediate proximity to Yellow Springs Hospital and Washington Hall, major Continental Army medical facilities during the Brandywine campaign.
  • Abigail served as a civilian nurse and provider, helping tend wounded soldiers and assisting in the gathering and transport of food, medicines, and supplies from surrounding farms.
  • Christina Schneider Hench, a neighboring farm owner, also opened her household to wounded soldiers, and she and Abigail worked within the same informal civilian medical network supporting the Continental Army.
  • Zachariah Rice used his skills as a millwright and carpenter to assist with the construction and maintenance of Yellow Springs Hospital and other wartime government projects, bringing military activity directly to the Rice household.
  • Abigail’s brother, Peter Hartman, served as a militia officer and recruiter, transporting supplies and escorting sick soldiers from Valley Forge to Yellow Springs by wagon, increasing the movement of wounded men through Hartman and Rice properties.

1777–1778

  • During the Valley Forge winter, Abigail’s nursing work intensified as troop movements, military construction, and the presence of sick and dying soldiers became a constant feature of daily life.
  • While making repeated visits to Yellow Springs Hospital, Abigail contracted typhus fever, a disease common in overcrowded military medical facilities.
  • Although she survived the initial illness, her health never fully recovered, leaving her physically weakened for the remainder of her life.

After 1778

  • Despite her fragile health, Abigail continued to manage her household and raise her children, maintaining domestic stability in the years following the war.

1789

  • The Rice family faced severe financial hardship when the long-standing English mortgage on their farm was foreclosed, resulting in the loss of land they had worked for decades.

November 6, 1789

  • Abigail died at the age of forty-seven, her health having failed after years of illness and cumulative hardship.
  • She was buried at St. Peter’s Church in the Pikeland area of Chester County, Pennsylvania.
  • Seventeen of her children walked in procession to her grave, a sight remembered as extraordinary even at the time.
  • Her original grave marker was later destroyed or lost, though her burial place is commemorated nearby.

Further research ongoing!