Today's Out Spotlight was a revolutionary in the truest sense. Taking on a male identity she went to fight in the American Revolution and was the first woman to receive a military pension in the United States. She fought for equal compensation for her service as those of her male counterparts. Today's Out Spotlight is Deborah Sampson.
Deborah Sampson was born in 1760. When she was a child, her father died at sea and her mother sent all of her family away. Her mother could not take care of her children because they did not have enough money. After Deborah was sent away, she worked as a servant on a farm. She learned to sew, spin, hunt, ride a horse and she could even do carpentry work. She loved to learn, and she begged the men in the family to teach her new things. Deborah learned so much from them that she later became a teacher.
Deborah Sampson was born in Plympton, Massachusetts on December 17, 1760. She was the oldest of six children of Jonathan and Deborah Bradford Sampson, both of old Colonial stock. The family lived in Middleborough, Massachusetts, during her childhood. When her family that her had drowned in a shipwreck in 1765, the family was poor, she was forced to put her children into service as indentured servants. Sampson was five yrs. old at the time.
Working in several different households; first with a spinster, then with the widow of Reverend Peter Thatcher, and finally, in 1770, in the household of Deacon Jeremiah and Susannah Thomas.
At eighteen she was released from her indentured servitude with the Thomas family, and took a position as a schoolteacher, rejecting the suggestion that she marry. It was 1778.
Wanting to help the men in the American Revolution, she could not, because women were not allowed to fight in the war. In order to help, she realized would have to disguise her self as a man. She practiced acting like a man and finally was ready to fight with the soldiers.
Her own mother failed to recognize her while she was disguised as a man. In disguise, the local recruiting office enlisted her under the name of "Thomas Thayer" of Carver. Because of the way in which she held the quill pen she signed her enlistment papers she fear may have been recognized as woman and did not report the next day for service. Then on May 20, 1782, she tried again, this time successfully enlisting in the Continental Army on the Muster of Master Noah Taft under the name of her deceased brother, Robert Shurtliff from Uxbridge, Massachusetts. Her signature still exists in Massachusetts records.
She had little trouble blending in, she was tall, educated, and just as strong as most of the men. At five feet and seven inches tall, which was tall for a woman then, but still a bit short for a man many of her fellow soldiers simply thought that she was a short boy. They teased because "Robert" did not have to shave.
She was chosen for the Light Infantry Company of the 4th Massachusetts Regiment under the command of Captain George Webb. The unit, consisting of fifty to sixty men, was first quartered in Bellingham, Massachusetts and later the unit mustered at Worcester under the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment, commanded by Colonel Shepard. Although she had some trouble with the men in her regiment after she looked in on the men changing, her distant cousin, Reverend Noah Alden, a minister in Bellingham, kept her secret.
Her first battle was on July 3, 1782, outside Tarrytown, New York, where she was wounded. She received 2 musket balls in her thigh and an enormous cut on her forehead. She begged her fellow soldiers to just let her die and not take her to the hospital, but they refused to abandon her. A soldier put her on his horse and they rode six miles to a hospital. The doctors treated her head wound, but she left the hospital before they could attend to the musket balls. Fearful that her true identity would be discovered, she removed one of the balls herself with a penknife and sewing needle, but her leg never fully healed because the other ball was too deep for her to reach.
On April 1, 1783 she was promoted and spent seven months serving as a waiter and aide to General John Patterson. This job entitled her to a better quality of life, better food, and less danger.
After the peace treaty was signed, thought was the war was over. However, on June 24 the President of Congress ordered General Washington to send a fleet of soldiers to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to aid in squelching a rebellion of several American officers. Sampson was a part of that fleet.
During that summer, she came down with malignant fever and was cared for by a doctor, Barnabas Binney. Removing her clothes to treat her and discovered the band she used to bind her breasts, discovering "Robert" was not a male soldier . Not betraying her secret, he took her to his house, where his wife and daughters further treated her.
Recovered, she returned to the army, but not for long. In September 1783 peace was assured through the signing of the Treaty of Paris. November 3 was the date for the soldiers to be sent home. When Dr. Binney asked her to deliver a note to General John Patterson, she knew that her secret was out. However, Paterson never said a word; instead, giving "Robert" an honorable discharge, a note with some words of advice, and a sum of money sufficient to bear her expenses home. On October 25, 1783, General Henry Knox honorably discharged Deborah Sampson from the Army at West Point, after a year and a half of service.
After leaving the army, she married Benjamin Gannett, a farmer, on April 7, 1785. They had three children: Earl (1786), Mary (1788) and Patience (1790), as well as Susanna Baker Shepard, an adopted orphan whom they took in as their own.
In January 1792, she petition the Legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for back pay which the army had withheld from her because she was a woman. Her petition passed through the Senate and was approved, then signed by Governor John Hancock. The General Court of Massachusetts verified her service and wrote that she "exhibited an extraordinary instance of female heroism by discharging the duties of a faithful gallant soldier, and at the same time preserving the virtue and chastity of her sex, unsuspected and unblemished". The court awarded her a total of 34 pounds.
Ten years later, in 1802, Sampson began giving lectures about her experiences in the army. Deborah enjoyed speaking about serving her country. These speeches were initiated because of her financial needs and a desire to justify her enlistment. But even with these speaking engagements, she was not making enough money to pay her expenses. She had to borrow money from her family and from her friend Paul Revere on many occasions. The soldiers in the Continental Army had received pensions for their services, but Sampson did not because she was female.
In 1804, Paul Revere wrote to Massachusetts' representative William Eustis, on Sampson's behalf. Revere requested that Congress grant her a military pension. This had never before been requested by or for a woman, but with her health failing and family being destitute, the money was greatly needed.
Revere wrote, "I have been induced to enquire her situation, and character, since she quit the male habit, and soldiers uniform; for the most decent apparel of her own sex; and 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."
On March 11, 1805 Congress in Washington obliged the letter, and placed her on the Massachusetts Invalid Pension Roll. This pension plan paid her four dollars a month.
In 1809, she sent another petition to Congress, asking that her pension as an invalid soldier, given to her in 1804, commence with the time of her discharge, in 1783. Had her petition been approved, she would have been awarded $960, to be divided into $48 a year for twenty years. It was denied until 1816, when her petition came before Congress again. This time, out of kindness, generosity, and maybe some guilt, they approved her petition, awarding her $76.80 a year. Finally receiving fair compensation she was able to repay all her loans and take better care of the family farm.
Deborah Sampson died on April 29, 1827 at the age of 66 of yellow fever and was buried in Rock Ridge Cemetery in the town of Sharon, Massachusetts. Her grandson, George Washington Gay, erected a monument to her and the Civil War veterans.
Her long and ultimately successful public campaign for the American Revolutionary War pension bridged gender differences in asserting the sense of entitlement felt by all of the veterans who had fought for their country.
The town of Sharon, Massachusetts now memorializes Sampson with Deborah Sampson Street, a Deborah Sampson Statue in front of the public library, Deborah Sampson Field, and the Deborah Sampson House.
Massachusetts adopted Deborah Samson Gannett as official state heroine in 1983, stating she made a unique contribution to American independence, and was the first woman to be awarded a military pension.
Happy 4th of July!
