Margaret Kemble Gage

Margaret Kemble Gage was the American-born wife of British general Thomas Gage and was later rumoured to have supplied patriot leaders with military intelligence. Margaret Kemble Gage is generally dated to 1734–1824.

Margaret Kemble married the British officer Thomas Gage, later commander-in-chief in North America, and lived within both colonial American and British elite society. Later tradition alleged that she leaked information about British plans before Lexington and Concord, but direct evidence for that claim is lacking.

Ann Rinaldi’s The Secret of Sarah Revere uses Margaret Kemble Gage in the mystery surrounding the leak of British plans before Lexington and Concord. The novel draws on the long-standing tradition that the American-born wife of General Thomas Gage may have passed sensitive information to Patriot contacts, allowing Sarah’s search for a secret informant to connect family suspicion with the intelligence network around Joseph Warren and Paul Revere.