Deborah Sampson

Deborah Sampson was born on December 17, 1760, in Plympton, Massachusetts, into a family of modest means.[5]^:24 Her father's name was Jonathan Sampson (or Samson) and her mother's name was Deborah Bradford.[5]^:24 Her siblings were Jonathan (b. 1753), Elisha (b. 1755), Hannah (b. 1756), Ephraim (b. 1759), Nehemiah (b. 1764), and Sylvia (b. 1766).[5] Sampson's mother was the great-granddaughter of William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth Colony.[6] Sampson's ancestry also included additional Mayflower passengers.[7]

Sampson was told that her father had most likely disappeared at sea, but evidence suggests that he actually abandoned the family and migrated to Lincoln County, Maine.[5]^:29 He took a common-law wife named Martha, had two or more children with her, and returned to Plympton in 1794 to attend to a property transaction.[5]^:29 In 1770, someone in Maine named Jonathan Sampson was indicted for murder, but it is uncertain whether this individual was Sampson's father because there are no existing records containing biographical details about the defendant in the case.[5]^:29

When Sampson's father abandoned the family, her mother was unable to provide for her children, so she placed them in the households of friends and relatives, a common practice in 18th-century New England.[5]^:30-31 Sampson was placed in the home of a maternal relative.[5]^:30-31 When her mother died shortly afterwards, she was sent to live with Reverend Peter Thatcher's widow Mary Prince Thatcher (1688–1771), who was then in her eighties.[5]^:30-31 Historians believe she learned to read while living with the widow Thatcher, who might have wanted Sampson to read Bible verses to her.[5]^:30-31

Upon the widow's death, Sampson was sent to live with the Jeremiah Thomas family in Middleborough, where she worked as an indentured servant from 1770 to 1778.[5]^:31 Although treated well, she was not sent to school like the Thomas children because Thomas was not a believer in the education of women.[5] Sampson was able to overcome Thomas's opposition by learning from Thomas's sons, who shared their school work with her.[5] This method was apparently successful; when her time as an indentured servant was over at age 18, Sampson made a living by teaching school during the summer sessions in 1779 and 1780.[5]^:41 She worked as a weaver in the winter; Sampson was highly skilled and worked for the Sproat Tavern as well as the Bourne, Morton, and Leonard families.[5] During her time teaching and weaving, she boarded with the families that employed her.[5]

Sampson was also reported to have woodworking and mechanical aptitude.[5] Her skills included basket weaving, and light carpentry such as producing milking stools and winter sleds.[5] She was also experienced with fashioning wooden tools and implements including weather vanes, spools for thread, and quills for weaving.[5] She also produced pie crimpers, which she sold door to door.[5]

Sampson was approximately 5 feet 9 inches tall,[5] compared to the average woman of her day, who was around 5 feet,[5] and the average man, who was 5 feet 6 inches[8] to 5 feet 8 inches tall.[9] Her biographer, Hermann Mann, who knew her personally for many years, implied that she was not thin, writing in 1797 that "her waist might displease a coquette."[10] He also reported that her breasts were very small, and that she bound them with a linen cloth to hide them during her years in uniform. Mann wrote that "the features of her face are regular; but not what a physiognomist would term the most beautiful."[10]

A neighbor who, as a boy, knew Sampson in her later years, remarked that she was "a person of plain features."[10] A descendant named Pauline Hildreth Monk Wise (1914–1994)[6] was believed by relatives to have strongly resembled Sampson, based on comparison of Pauline's physical appearance to a 1797 portrait of Sampson, contemporary descriptions of Sampson's features and height, and Pauline's height, which at 6 feet was taller than most men.[5][6] Sampson's appearance — tall, broad, strong, and not delicately feminine — contributed to her success at pretending to be a man.[5]

In early 1782, Sampson wore men's clothes and joined an Army unit in Middleborough, Massachusetts under the name Timothy Thayer.[11] She collected a bonus and then failed to meet up with her company as scheduled. Inquiries by the company commander revealed that Sampson had been recognized by a local resident at the time she signed her enlistment papers. Her deception uncovered, she repaid the portion of the bonus that she had not spent, but she was not subjected to further punishment by the Army.[12] The Baptist church to which she belonged learned of her actions and withdrew its fellowship, meaning that its members refused to associate with her unless she apologized and asked forgiveness.[13]

In May 1782, Sampson enlisted again, this time in Uxbridge, Massachusetts under the name "Robert Shirtliff" (also spelled in some sources as "Shirtliffe" or "Shurtleff"). She joined the Light Infantry Company of the 4th Massachusetts Regiment,[14] under the command of Captain George Webb (1740–1825). This unit, consisting of 50 to 60 men, was first quartered in Bellingham, Massachusetts, and later mustered at Worcester with the rest of the regiment commanded by Colonel William Shepard. Light Infantry Companies were elite troops, specially picked because they were taller and stronger than average.[15] Their job was to provide rapid flank coverage for advancing regiments, as well as rearguard and forward reconnaissance duties for units on the move.[16] Because she joined an elite unit, Sampson's disguise was more likely to succeed, since no one was likely to look for a woman among soldiers who were specially chosen for their above average size and superior physical ability.[5]

Sampson fought in several skirmishes. During her first battle, on July 3, 1782 outside Tarrytown, New York, she took two musket balls in her thigh and sustained a cut on her forehead. She begged her fellow soldiers not take her to a doctor out of fear her sex would be discovered, but a soldier put her on his horse and took her to a hospital. A doctor treated her head wound, but she left the hospital before he could attend to her leg. She removed one of the balls herself with a penknife and sewing needle, but the other was too deep for her to reach. She carried it in her leg for the rest of her life and her leg never fully healed.[17] On April 1, 1783, she was reassigned to new duties, and spent seven months serving as a waiter to General John Paterson.

The war was thought to be over following the Battle of Yorktown, but since there was no official peace treaty, the Continental Army remained in uniform. On June 24, the President of Congress ordered George Washington to send a contingent of soldiers under Paterson to Philadelphia to help quell a rebellion of American soldiers who were protesting delays in receiving their pay and discharges. During the summer of 1783, Sampson became ill in Philadelphia and was cared for by Doctor Barnabas Binney (1751–1787). He removed her clothes to treat her and discovered the cloth she used to bind her breasts. Without revealing his discovery to army authorities, he took her to his house, where his wife, daughters, and a nurse took care of her.

In September 1783, following the signing of the Treaty of Paris, November 3 was set as the date for soldiers to muster out. When Dr. Binney asked Sampson to deliver a note to General Paterson, she correctly assumed that it would reveal her gender. In other cases, women who pretended to be men to serve in the army were reprimanded, but Paterson gave her a discharge, a note with some words of advice, and enough money to travel home. She was honorably discharged at West Point, New York, on October 25, 1783, after a year and a half of service.[4]

An official record of Deborah Sampson Gannett's service as "Robert Shirtliff" from May 20, 1782 to Oct 25, 1783 appears in the "Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War" series.[18]

Statue of Sampson at Sharon, Massachusetts, public library

Deborah Sampson was married in Stoughton, Massachusetts, to Benjamin Gannett (1757–1827), a farmer from Sharon, Massachusetts, on April 7, 1785. They had three children: Earl (b. 1786), Mary (b. 1788), and Patience (b. 1790). They also adopted Susanna Baker Shepard, an orphan. They farmed on land that had been in Gannett's family for generations; their farm was smaller than average, and the land was not productive because it had been worked extensively.

In January 1792, Sampson petitioned the Massachusetts State Legislature for pay which the army had withheld from her because she was a woman. The legislature granted her petition and Governor John Hancock signed it. The legislature awarded her 34 pounds plus interest back to her discharge in 1783.[19]

In 1802, Sampson began giving lectures about her wartime service. She began by extolling the virtues of traditional gender roles for women, but toward the end of her presentation she left the stage, returned dressed in her army uniform, and then performed a complicated and physically taxing military drill and ceremony routine.[4] She performed both to earn money and to justify her enlistment, but even with these speaking engagements, she was not making enough money to pay her expenses. She frequently had to borrow money from her family and from her friend Paul Revere. Revere also wrote letters to government officials on her behalf, requesting that she be awarded a pension for her military service and her wounds.

In 1804, Revere wrote to U.S. Representative William Eustis of Massachusetts on Sampson's behalf. A military pension had never been requested for a woman. Revere wrote: "I have been induced to enquire her situation, and character, since she quit the male habit, and soldiers uniform; for the more decent apparel of her own gender...humanity and justice obliges me to say, that every person with whom I have conversed about her, and it is not a few, speak of her as a woman with handsome talents, good morals, a dutiful wife, and an affectionate parent."[20] On March 11, 1805, Congress approved the request and placed Sampson on the Massachusetts Invalid Pension Roll at the rate of four dollars a month.

On February 22, 1806, Sampson wrote once more to Revere requesting a loan of ten dollars: "My own indisposition and that of my sons causes me again to solicit your goodness in our favor though I, with Gratitude, confess it rouses every tender feeling and I blush at the thought of receiving ninety and nine good turns as it were—my circumstances require that I should ask the hundredth." He sent the ten dollars.

In 1809, she sent another petition to Congress, asking that her pension as an invalid soldier be modified to start from her discharge in 1783. Had her petition been approved, she would have been awarded back pay of $960 — approximately $13,800 in 2016 ($48 a year for 20 years). Her petition was denied, but when it came before Congress again in 1816 an award of $76.80 a year (about $1,100 in 2016 dollars) was approved. With this amount, she was able to repay all her loans and make improvements to the family farm.

Sampson died of yellow fever at the age of 66 on April 29, 1827,[21] and was buried at Rock Ridge Cemetery in Sharon, Massachusetts.[22]

• Cathay Williams
• Anna Maria Lane
• Mary Ludwig Hays
• Molly Corbin
• John Hancock
• Eleonore Prochaska
• Agustina de Aragón
• Sally St. Clair

• Bohrer, Melissa Lukeman. Glory, Passion, and Principle: The Story of Eight Remarkable Women at the Core of the American Revolution. New York: Atria Books, 2003. ISBN 0-743-45330-1 OCLC 52097551
• Michals, Debra. "Deborah Sampson". National Women's History Museum. 2015.
• Klass, Sheila Solomon. Soldier's Secret: The Story of Deborah Sampson. New York: Henry Holt, 2009. ISBN 9780805082005
• Leonard, Elizabeth D. All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1999. ISBN 0-393-04712-1 OCLC 40543151
• McGovern, Ann, and Harold Goodwin. The Secret Soldier: The Story of Deborah Sampson. New York: Scholastic Inc, 1975. ISBN 0-590-32176-5 OCLC 13190829 Intended for juvenile audiences.

• "Deborah Sampson". Find a Grave. Retrieved January 24, 2009.
• Canton (Massachusetts) Historical Society Deborah Samson [sic] Retrieved April 15, 2012.
• Michals, Debra. "Deborah Sampson". National Women's History Museum. 2015.