Deborah Samson
The Life of a Female Soldier During the American Revolution
Disguised as a man, Deborah Samson fought during the American Revolution; after being wounded, she received an honorable discharge and began a public speaking career.
Deborah Samson
During a period in American history in which women were to be “seen and not heard,” Deborah Samson proved that women could, indeed, accomplish the work of a man. Disguised as a man, Private Robert Shurtliff, Samson had a distinguished career as a patriot in the Revolutionary army.
The daughter of parents who could trace their lineage to the Mayflower settlers, Samson grew up in a life of poverty. Abandoned by her father at the age of six in 1766, Samson was “bound out” as an indentured servant by her mother, who could not provide for her seven children.
She eventually ended up at the home of Deacon Jeremiah Thomas in Middleborough, Massachusetts, where she spent ten years. Although she did not receive any formal schooling, she was able to review lessons with the Thomas sons each evening after the field work was done. At the age of eighteen, she became a teacher in Middleboro, and supplemented her income by taking on spinning and weaving jobs at home.
During her time in the Thomas household, she had been able to observe the growing tension between the British and the colonists, and she had been in attendance at the initial reading of the Declaration of Independence. Her desire to assist her country fueled her passion to enlist, and reports indicate that she attempted to enlist in the Army as “Timothy Thayer of Carver” in early 1782, but then changed her mind.
However, on 20 May 1782, she dressed as a man and joined the 4th Massachusetts Regiment as Robert Shurtliff. She joined forty-nine other recruits in the company of Captain George Webb, and marched to West Point to receive her uniform. Although the war had officially ended with the surrender at Yorktown, guerilla warfare still ensued, instigated by Tories who refused to admit defeat, and the British still occupied New York City.
During the resulting skirmishes, Shurtliff distinguished himself as effective in hand-to-hand combat; however, during an engagement in Tarrytown, New York, Shurtliff was wounded in the head by a saber and thigh by a musket ball while attempting to retreat. Although her head wound was treated by a French doctor at a field hospital, he was not notified of the thigh wound; Sampson limped out of the hospital while he was with another patient, and attempted to extract the musket ball with her knife.
She spent some time in recovery, but never completely removed the ball, and upon her return to active duty, came down with a fever. Legend has it that her sex was discovered by Dr. Barnabas Binney, who treated her at his home so as to avoid public discovery of her sex. After her recovery, and the revelation of her gender, Samson/ Shurtliff received an honorable discharge on 23 October 1783.
Upon her return to Middleborough, she met and later married farmer Benjamin Gannett on 7 April 1785, with whom she had three children. Again a life of poverty ensued, and letters from Samson indicate that she had to borrow money from friends, including Paul Revere.
Through his political connections, Revere encouraged Samson to apply for the pension owed to war veterans. She received thirty-four pounds with interest on 19 January 1792 from the Massachusetts governor John Hancock.
She also began to give lectures about her experiences as a soldier, even going so far as to appear in public in her uniform. Advertisements for her lectures described her as the “American Heroine”; she spoke throughout Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island, thus allowing Samson and her family to become financially secure. She received a veteran’s pension in 1802 of four dollars a month, which went to her husband after her death in 1827.
Almost two centuries after her death, then Massachusetts governor Michael J. Dukasis signed a proclamation on 23 May 1983 declaring Samson as the “Official Heroine of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” making this the first time any individual had been proclaimed “hero” or “heroine” of any state.
Bibliography
Evans, Elizabeth. Weathering the Storm: Women of the American Revolution. New York: Paragon House, 1989.
Hiltner, Judith. “She Bled in Secret.” Early American Literature 34.2 (Spring 1999): 190-212.
Leonard, Patrick J. “Deborah Samson.” Canton Massachusetts Historical Society Papers. Online.
http://www.canton.org/samson
Norton, Mary Beth. Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800. Boston: Little, Brown, 1980.
