Deborah Sampson (1760-April 29 1827) was a female soldier during the American War of Independence who fought dressed as a man.
Deborah Sampson (or Samson, which is probably the original spelling) was born in Winnetuxet (later Plympton, Massachusetts) in December 17 as the first child. She would have three brother and three sisters later. At the age of five his father went to sea. Because her mother could not raise the whole family alone, she went to live with her mother's cousin Ruth Fuller. Fuller died when Deborah was eight years old. She moved to live with Mrs Thatcher and went to work as an indentured servant for the household of deacon Benjamin (or Jeremiah) Thomas. In her free time she would go to school or read. She also learned how to shoot a musket with Thomas' sons.
When the American War of Independence started, Sampson was fifteen years old. At the age of 18 in 1779 her term of servitude ended and she became a teacher in Middleborough public school.
In the winter of 1780 Benjamin Thomas visited and told that his sons had been killed in battle when serving under Marquis de Lafayette. At the time she was rooming with a married couple of Benjamin Leonard and his wife. Next year she took the clothes of their son and visited her mother and a fortune-teller, testing her disguise. Apparently it did work.
On May 20 1782 Sampson enlisted for three years in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment of the Continental Army at Bellingham, Massachusetts with an assumed name of Robert Shurtleff (although other sources state a name as Shirtliffe, Shurtliffe, Shurlieffe or even Timothy Thayer). She became part of the company under captain George Webb (or Nathan Thayer) that was sent to West Point, New York. She served in a light infantry division. Her Baptist church later excommunicated her for wearing men's clothing.
She was foraging for food near Tarrytown when she was shot to a leg. Fearing exposure, she refused to see a doctor and tended to wound herself; the leg did not recover completely. During the following eighteen months she was wounded two more times - sword cut to the head and another bullet in the leg. Both times she treated the wound herself. Then she contracted a fever and was sent to a hospital, where reputedly Dr Barnabas Binney noticed she was a woman. Binney did not go public but took her to his own home in Philadelphia to recuperate and spoke to her commanding officer.
When she had recovered, she was assigned to deliver a letter to the George Washington. Reputedly Washington discharged her and gave her money to get home without saying a word. Her service was over. Officially, general Henry Knox gave her honorable discharge on October 25 1783.
In 1784 Sampson married farmer Benjamin Gannet - they had three children. In 1792, Massachusetts General court granted her a payment of 34 pounds for her wartime service. In 1802 she began to make tours where she always wore her uniform and talked about her wartime experience. In 1804 Paul Revere started a petition that eventually granted her a pension of four dollars per month and later a land grant.
Deborah Sampson died on April 29 1827 in Sharon, Massachusetts. Her husband petitioned for compensation for medical expenses due to her wartime wounds and her children were granted $466.66.
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