At 11am of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918 an armistice, or cessation of hostilities, was signed by the Allied Nations and Germany. In 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11th as the first commemoration of Armistice Day. Armistice Day was signed into law as an official holiday on May 13, 1938, to be celebrated annually on November 11th. The Armistice day bill was amended in 1958 to honor veterans of all American wars since we had just been through WWII and Korea. The title Armistice was removed and Veteran was used in it's place. The Uniform Holiday Bill, passed June 1968, which was designed to give federal workers a three day weekend by celebrating four national holidays on a Monday, moved the date of Veteran's Day. The first celebration on October 25 1971 after the change caused much confusion. Many people felt that the date of November 11th had historical significance for the holiday. In 1975, President Gerald Ford signed a new law reinstating November 11th as the official day to observe Veteran's Day.
Now, I would like to honor a veteran of the American Revolution. A veteran who felt so strongly in the rights and freedoms of her fellow countrymen that she defied convention, society, and even law in order to fight for what she believed was right. Deborah Sampson is a true American Patriot and she deserves to be remembered and honored as such.
"...I burst the tyrant bonds, which held my sex in awe, and clandestinely, or by stealth, grasped an opportunity, which custom and the world seemed to deny, as a natural privilege. And whilst poverty, hunger, nakedness, cold and disease had dwindled the American Armies to a handful....did I throw off the soft baliments of my sex, and assume those of the warrior...." Deborah Sampson
Deborah, the fifth of eight children, was born on December 17, 1760 in Plympton, Massachusetts. Her family were poor farmers and her father left on a business trip when she was five, never to be seen or heard from again. Unable to care for all her children, Deborah's mother sent her oldest five, including Deborah, to live with various relatives. Deborah lived with a cousin of her mother's for three years until the woman's sudden death. Deborah finally found a place as an indentured servant until she turned eighteen; she was ten at the time. The ten years she spent with the Thomas family were happy times. She worked for the family but they also taught her to hunt and shoot and she was allowed to listen in to the school lessons her adopted brothers were given. She learned to read and write. She was disturbed by all the troubling news from around the country such as the Boston Tea Party and Massacre, and the Battle of Lexington and Concord. She developed a fierce patriotism and was very envious when her adopted brothers became militiamen. Deborah felt keenly the limitations of her sex. She wanted to do more for her country than just sew clothes for the soldiers. She wanted TO BE a soldier. But how could she fight along side of men when to do so would be seen as the downfall of her womanhood? Deborah was smart; she had a plan.
One night she rose from bed, bound her chest, cut her hair short and donned a fake uniform which she had kept hidden for over a month. This was the culmination of her great plan. She had tested her disguise out on the townspeople before and was discovered. She walked through town in an old soldier's uniform and to the recruiting office. She signed her name as Timothy Thayer and collected her sign on bounty. When Timothy Thayer did not report for duty, Deborah was found out. She was ridiculed, forced to give back the bounty and even expelled from her church for "....dressing in men's clothes, and inlisting as a soldier in the army and altho she was not convicted, yet was strongly suspected of being guilty and for sometime before behaved very loose and unchristian like..." This time it had to work.
Deborah traveled on foot to Boston. After staying there a few days she kept traveling disguised as a man until she reached the town of Bellingham. While there she was approached by a man hoping to enlist "a fine young man such as yourself" into the army. At the unusual height of 5'9", and not overly feminine looking, with her chest bound and her hair cropped, her disguise had indeed worked. When the time came to put her name to the enlistment papers she signed Robert Shurtliff; the name of her older brother that had died in infancy. Deborah, A.K.A. Robert Shurtliff was officially a soldier in the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment of the Continental Army. She was 22 years old.
Soon after her enlistment, she and her regiment marched from western Massachusetts to West Point in New York. Thanks to her years romping with the boys of the Thomas family she was more than capable of using a musket and bayonet. She quickly received a promotion to a special group in the Light Infantry Division known as the Rangers, an elite section of the Continental Army that were sent on special missions apart from the main body of the army.
On their first mission "Robert" was wounded during a skirmish with a roving band of Tories (men loyal to the English Crown). She was shot in the leg and suffered a large knife wound on her forehead. She was carried to a French army hospital set up six miles away from where the skirmish took place. Deborah was terrified that her true identity would be discovered. Her forehead was treated and bandaged and her leg wound cleaned but she would let the doctor do no more. While his back was turned she quickly limped out into the night. Several tries later she successfully removed the musket ball from her leg by herself. She had only been a soldier for five short months.
A fellow soldier, Snow, became ill and "Robert" offered to stay behind with him. Seeking out help they came upon a house in which they asked to seek refuge. Unfortunately, the owner of the house was a Tory and he locked "Robert" and Snow in the attic and tried to starve them to death. After seven days Snow finally succumbed to his illness and lack of food. Deborah finally decided she had to get out of that attic. She grabbed both her gun and Snow's and all the ammunition and made her way through the attic door. The house was very still and quiet and somehow Deborah made it to the first floor, out the front door and into the night without being seen. Two days later she came upon an army barge and was given food and water and medical treatment. She returned to West Point and praised for her bravery and loyalty. She gave information about the Tory house to her superiors and the house was raided and several Tories taken prisoner.
In April 1783, "Robert" was appointed as aide-de-camp to General Patterson. A few weeks later she was given permission to join up with General Howe's forces in Philadelphia to put down an uprising by disgruntled Continental soldiers. Deborah arrived too late to be of any help and unfortunately caught a fever that was ravaging the town. She was taken to a local hospital where a doctor discovered her secret. This sympathetic doctor Binney removed her to his own home so that her identity would not be discovered by anyone else.
When the Treaty of Paris was signed in September 1783, "Robert" was ordered back to West Point where her regiment was to be disbanded. Dr. Binney gave her a note to give to General Patterson. She was terrified that Dr. Binney was going to reveal her secret to General Patterson. She could have read the letter to see what it said; she could have thrown it away so no one else would ever know that "Robert Shurtliff" was really Deborah Sampson, but she didn't. General Patterson read Dr. Binney's letter and asked Deborah if it was true that she was a woman, she admitted it was so. Deborah was shocked that she was not subjected to the punishment and humiliation which she had expected. Instead she was treated with respect by her fellow soldiers and her commanding officers. On October 25, 1783, Deborah received an honorable discharge from the army signed by General Henry Knox and traveled back home.
Two years later she met and married Benjamin Gannett and gave birth to three children and adopted a fourth. Deborah's story appeared in a few newspapers and a book was written about her. Later, at the age of 42, Deborah began a lecture tour. She became the first woman ever to go on a professional lecture circuit. Deborah would appear onstage in full military regalia and with a musket she would demonstrate the twenty-seven arms maneuvers at the command of an officer. When asked why she had decided to hide her sex and enlist as a solider she had this to say:
"....My mind became agitated with the inquiry - why a nation, separated from us by an ocean more than three thousand miles in extent, should endeavor to enforce on us plans of subjugation, the most unnatural in themselves, unjust, inhuman, in their operations, and unpracticed even by the uncivilized savages of the wilderness?...I only seemed to want the license to become one of the severest avengers of the wrong."
Deborah kept a diary through-out her life as a soldier. Unfortunately one of her diaries was lost in a storm at sea, but she started another one as soon as she hit land. She kept up her diary the rest of her life.
She was awarded a pension from the United States of $4 a month for services rendered during the war. She was also awarded a pension from the state of Massachusetts for "extraordinary instance of female heroism by discharging the duties of a faithful, gallant soldier, and at the same time preserving the virtue and charity of her sex unsuspected and unblemished". In 1827, at the age of sixty-eight Deborah Sampson passed away in the home her son, a captain in the War of 1812, built for her in Sharon, Massachusetts. The house is still standing today.
Deborah Sampson was a remarkable woman and a true American Patriot. She is a part of the spirit that makes America what it is today and she deserves to be honored this and every Veteran's Day along with so many fallen and forgotten heroes and heroines of America's past.
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