Deborah Sampson aka Robert Shurtleff

Deborah Sampson, also known as Deborah Samson, is renowned for having disguised herself as a man in order to fight in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Sampson served for 17 months under the name Robert Shurtleff before being honorably discharged in 1783. After the war, she married Benjamin Gannett and the two settled in Sharon, MA, where the Gannett family farm was located.

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Deborah Sampson also known as Samson was born in Plympton MA in 1760 as one of seven children to a poor family. When her father Jonathan failed to return from a sea voyage everyone thought he’d died. No one realized he had abandoned the family and moved to Maine to start a new family. Deborah’s impoverished mother Priscilla Alden was forced to place the children in different households. She was sent to a maternal relative, and then when her mother died, to widow Mary Prince Thatcher who was a Reverend’s widow and likely taught her to read via bible passages.

5 years later at age 10 Deborah was bound out as an indentured servant to a farmer in Middleborough. Sources differ on whether this was Deacon Benjamin Thomas or Jeremiah Thomas. Whichever Thomas it was, they did not believe in educating women, so she learned from Thomas’s sons who shared their school work with her. At 18 with her indenture completed, Sampson worked as a teacher in summer and a weaver in winter, boarding with the families that employed her. She’s also reported to have woodworking, basket weaving, and mechanical aptitude, such as making simple tools and selling them door to door.

In early 1782, as the Revolutionary War raged on, the patriotic 5’7” Sampson disguised herself as a man named Timothy Thayer and when found out, later as Robert Shurtleff where she joined the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment. This was considered an elite troop, specifically picked because they were taller and stronger than average.

At West Point, New York, she was assigned to Captain George Webb’s Company of Light Infantry. She was given the dangerous task of scouting neutral territory to assess British buildup of men and materiel in Manhattan, which General George Washington contemplated attacking. In June of 1782, Sampson and two sergeants led about 30 infantrymen on an expedition that ended with a confrontation—often one-on-one—with Tories. She led a raid on a Tory home that resulted in the capture of 15 men. Sampson—like many veterans of the Revolution—also claimed she fought during the siege of Yorktown, digging trenches, helping storm a British redoubt, and enduring canon fire, but this cannot be confirmed.

For almost two years, Sampson’s true sex had escaped detection despite close calls. When she received a gash in her forehead from a sword and was shot in her left thigh, she extracted the pistol ball herself. She was ultimately discovered—a year and a half into her service—in Philadelphia, when she became ill during an epidemic, was taken to a hospital, and lost consciousness.

Receiving an honorable discharge from General Henry Knox on October 23, 1783, Sampson returned to Massachusetts. On April 7, 1785 she married Benjamin Gannet from Sharon, and they had three children, Earl, Mary, and Patience.

Although Sampson’s life after the army was mostly typical of a farmer’s wife, in 1802 she began a year-long lecture tour about her experiences—the first woman in America to do so—sometimes dressing in full military regalia.

-Source Links-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_Massachusetts_Regiment

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/deborah-sampson-american-revolutionary-war-hero

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/deborah-sampson

https://archive.org/details/deborahsampsonga00tapp/page/n103/mode/2up?q=sharon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Sampson