The Virginia Regiment typically authorized three women per fort to cook and wash laundry for the garrison. No records identify these women or tell what became of them after their service, but they provided important support to the defense of the frontier. Their only compensation for endless hard labor was a share of food rations on condition of their behaving well and washing for the men. Captain Ashby's wife Jane also lived at the fort, but as an officer's wife she would have been spared cooking and washing chores. She apparently used her free time to meddle in the affairs of the garrison, drawing the ire of Colonel Washington, who wrote to Captain Ashby on 12/28/1755 that there were continual complaints of her misbehavior, that she sowed sedition among the men and was chief of every mutiny, and that if she was not immediately sent from the camp, he would drive her out himself and suspend Ashby.