Deborah Sampson

Deborah Samson Gannett (December 17, 1760 – April 29, 1827), better known as Deborah Samson or Deborah Sampson, was a woman who disguised herself as a man in order to serve in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. She is one of a small number of women with a documented record of military combat experience in that war. She served 17 months in the army under the name "Robert Shirtliffe" (also spelled Shirtliffe or Shurtleff) of Uxbridge, Massachusetts, was wounded in 1782, and was honorably discharged at West Point, New York, in 1783.

Deborah Samson was born on December 17, 1760, in Plympton, Massachusetts, into a family that was not well off. Her siblings were Jonathan (born 1753), Elisha (born 1755), Hannah (born 1756), Ephraim (born 1759), Nehemiah (born 1764), and Sylvia (born 1766). Deborah's mother was the great-granddaughter of William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth Colony.

Deborah 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. 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. A 1770 murder indictment in Maine named someone called Jonathan Samson as the defendant; it is not known for certain whether this individual was Deborah’s father because there are no existing records containing biographical details about the defendant.

When Deborah's father abandoned the family, her mother was unable to provide for her children, so placed them in the households of friends and relatives, a common practice in 18th-century New England. Deborah was placed in the home of a maternal relative. When her mother died shortly afterwards, she was sent to live with Reverend Peter Thatcher's widow, who was then in her eighties. It is thought that she learned to read while living with the widow Thatcher, who might have wanted Deborah to read Bible verses to her. Upon the widow's death, Deborah was sent to live with Jeremiah Thomas in Middleborough, where she worked as an indentured servant from 1770 to 1778. Although treated well by the family, she was not sent to school like the Thomas children because Thomas was not a believer in the education of women. Samson was able to overcome Thomas's opposition by learning from Thomas's sons, who shared their school work with her. This method was apparently successful; when her time as an indentured servant was over at age 18, Deborah made a living by teaching school during the summer sessions in 1779 and 1780. She worked as a weaver in the winter; Samson was a highly skilled weaver and worked for the Sproat Tavern as well as the Bourne family, the Morton family, and the Leonard family. During her time as a teacher and a weaver she boarded with the families that employed her.

Samson was approximately 5 feet 9 inches tall, compared to the average woman of her day who was around 5 feet. Her biographer, Hermann Mann, who knew her personally for many years, implied she was not thin, writing in 1797 that "[h]er waist might displease a coquette". 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".

A neighbor who as a boy knew Deborah as an elderly woman remarked that she was "a person of plain features". A descendant named Pauline Hildreth Monk Wise (1914-1994) was believed by relatives to have strongly resembled Deborah, based on a 1797 portrait of Deborah, the description of her features, and her height, which was 6 feet. Samson's appearance -- tall, broad, strong, and not delicately feminine -- contributed to her success at pretending to be a man.

In early 1782, Samson wore men's clothes and joined an Army unit in Middleborough, Massachusetts, under the name Timothy Thayer. She collected a bonus and then failed to meet up with her company as scheduled. Inquiries by the company commander revealed that Samson had been recognized 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. The Baptist church to which she belonged learned of her actions and withdrew its fellowship, meaning that its members refused to associate with her until she apologized and asked forgiveness.

In May 1782, Samson enlisted again in Uxbridge, Massachusetts under the name "Robert Shirtliff" (also spelled in various sources as Shirtliffe and Shurtleff), and joined the Light Infantry Company of the 4th Massachusetts Regiment, 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 Shepard.

Samson 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 a cut on her forehead. She begged her fellow soldiers to let her die and not take her to the hospital, but a soldier put her on his horse and took her to a hospital. The doctors treated her head wound, but she left the hospital before they could attend to her other wounds. Fearful that her identity would be discovered, she removed one of the balls herself with a penknife and sewing needle, but the other musket ball was too deep for her to reach. Her leg never fully healed. On April 1, 1783, she was promoted 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, Samson 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 Deborah to deliver a note to General Paterson, she correctly assumed that the note would reveal her gender. In other cases, women who pretended to be men to serve in the army were reprimanded, but Paterson gave her an honorable discharge, a note with some words of advice, and enough money to travel home. She was discharged at West Point, New York, on October 25, 1783, after a year and a half of service.

Statue of Sampson at Sharon, Massachusetts, public library

Deborah Samson was married in Stoughton, Massachusetts, to Benjamin Gannett (1761–1827), a farmer from Sharon, Massachusetts, on April 7, 1785. They had three children: Earl (1786), Mary (1788), and Patience (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. These factors, coupled with the depression in the post-war economy, left the family on the edge of poverty.

In January 1792, Samson 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.

In 1802, Samson 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 to return dressed in her army uniform and performed a complicated and physically taxing military drill and ceremony routine. 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 Samson'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". On March 11, 1805, Congress approved the request and placed Samson on the Massachusetts Invalid Pension Roll at the rate of four dollars a month.

On February 22, 1806, Samson 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 ($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 was approved. With this amount, she was able to repay all her loans and make improvements to the family farm.

Samson died of yellow fever at the aged 66 on April 29, 1827, and was buried at Rock Ridge Cemetery in Sharon, Massachusetts.

Memorials

Sharon, Massachusetts, now memorializes Samson with a statue in front of the public library, the Deborah Sampson Park, and the Deborah Sampson House.

During World War II the Liberty Ship S.S. Deborah Gannett (2620) was named in her honor. It was laid down March 10, 1944, launched April 10, 1944 and scrapped in 1962.

As of 2001, the town flag of Plympton incorporates Samson as the Official Heroine of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Portrayals in art, entertainment, and media

Samson is portrayed in episode 34 of Liberty's Kids entitled "Deborah Samson: Soldier of the Revolution."

Alex Myers, a descendant of Samson's, published Revolutionary (2014), a fictionalized account of her life.

On July 7, 2016, historian/journalist Allison L. Cowan presented "Deborah Sampson: Continental Army soldier", a biographical talk for that week's First Thursdays at Saint Paul's Church National Historic Site.