[EARLY AMERICAN PRINTING]. An original woodblock printing plate for the illustration depicting either Mary Rowlandson (c. 1637-1711) in “A Narrative of the Captivity, Sufferings and Removes of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson”. Boston: Nathaniel Coverly and Zechariah Fowle, 1770; [Or], Hannah Snell (1723-1792) in “The Life and Adventures of a Female Soldier” [an expert in: New England Almanack. Boston: Isaiah Thomas, 1774]. Engraved hardwood plate (76 x 57 x 25 mm), old hairline crack with loss near top corner. The image shows a woman wearing a cockade hat, holding a musket and powder horn; the British flag flying over a fort in the backdrop. This illustration can be traced back as far as 1762 when Zechariah Fowle published “A New Book for Children”, serving as “Miss Fanny’s Maid”, although the story never described the character as carrying a gun. The image reappeared five years later in the Fowle and Nathaniel Coverly of Boston editions of the “Narrative of the Captivity, Sufferings and Removes of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” - one of New England’s most popular “Indian captivity narratives”, first published in 1682. The image served as a portrait of Rowlandson, even though she never described herself picking up a gun. It again reappeared in Thomas’s 1774 New England Almanac…[for] 1775 (see Evans, American Bibliography 13300). Snell, the most famous cross-dressing British soldier of the century, was a British woman who disguised herself as a man and served as a soldier in the British Army and the Royal Marines. In 1745, Snell’s husband, James Summs, abandoned her shortly after their marriage. Determined to find him, she cut her hair, dressed in men’s clothing, and adopted the name James Gray. Under this guise, she enlisted in the army and served in various campaigns, including the Battle of Pondicherry in India where her disguise was eventually discovered after she was wounded in battle. However, her superiors were so impressed by her bravery and honorable service, that they allowed her to continue serving until her true gender was publicly revealed. J.L. Bell in “Tracking Down a Musket-Toting Woman” for The Journal of the American Revolution notes the possibility that the image was most likely the creation of Isaiah Thomas, who was indentured to Zechariah Fowle in 1755 at the age of six and worked for him for ten years before running off to Halifax. Later, Thomas recalled that he had carved about a hundred crude images for Fowle’s ballads.