Gannett, Deborah Sampson, 1760-1827

Deborah Sampson Gannett, also known as Deborah Samson or Deborah Sampson,[1] was born on December 17, 1760, in Plympton, Massachusetts.[2] She disguised herself as a man, and served in the Continental Army under the name Robert Shirtliff – sometimes spelled Shurtleff[2] or Shirtleff[3] – and fought in the American Revolutionary War. She fought in the war for 17 months before her sex was revealed when she required medical treatment after contracting a fever in Philadelphia in 1783.[4] After her real identity was made known to her commander, she was honorably discharged at West Point.[4] After her discharge, Sampson met and married Benjamin Gannett in 1785. In 1802, she became one of the first women to go on a lecture tour to speak about her wartime experiences.[4] She died in Sharon, Massachusetts, in 1827.[4] She was proclaimed the Official Heroine of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on May 23, 1983, and in 1985 the United States Capitol Historical Society posthumously honored "Deborah Samson" with the Commemorative Medal.[5] In early 1782, Sampson wore men's clothes and joined an Army unit in Middleborough, Massachusetts, under the name Timothy Thayer.[9] She collected a bonus and then failed to meet up with her company as scheduled. Inquiries by the company commander revealed that Sampson had been recognized by a local resident 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.[10] The Baptist church to which she belonged learned of her actions and withdrew its fellowship, meaning that its members refused to associate with her unless she apologized and asked forgiveness.[11]

In May 1782, Sampson enlisted again, this time in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, under the name "Robert Shirtliff" (also spelled in some sources as "Shirtliffe" or "Shurtleff"). She joined the Light Infantry Company of the 4th Massachusetts Regiment,[12] under the command of Captain George Webb. 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 William Shepard. Light Infantry Companies were elite troops, specially picked because they were taller and stronger than average.[13] Their job was to provide rapid flank coverage for advancing regiments, as well as rearguard and forward reconnaissance duties for units on the move.[14] Because she joined an elite unit, Sampson's disguise was more likely to succeed, since no one was likely to look for a woman among soldiers who were specially chosen for their above average size and superior physical ability.[6]: 98, 103 

In June or July 1782, Sampson participated in a skirmish near Tarrytown, New York with about 30 infantrymen from her unit combating with local band of Tories.[6]: 124  Sampson was shot in her thigh and sustained a sword cut to her forehead.[6]: 128  She begged her fellow soldiers not to take her to a doctor out of fear her sex would be discovered, but a soldier put her on his horse and took her to a hospital.[6]: 127  A doctor treated her head wound, but she left the hospital before he could attend to her leg.[6]: 128  She removed the ball herself with a penknife and sewing needle, but some of the shot was too deep to reach.[6]: 128  As described in her later applications for a pension, her leg never fully healed.[6]: 129  On April 1, 1783, she was reassigned to new duties, and spent seven months serving as a waiter to General John Paterson.[6]: 137 

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.[6]: 148  During the summer of 1783, Sampson became ill in Philadelphia and was cared for by Doctor Barnabas Binney (1751–1787).[6]: 150  After Sampson fell unconscious due to fever, Dr. Binney removed her clothes to treat her and discovered the cloth she used to bind her breasts.[6]: 150  Without revealing his discovery to army authorities, he took her to his house, where his wife, daughters, and a female nurse cared for her.[6]: 150 

In September 1783, following the signing of the Treaty of Paris, November 3 was set as the date for soldiers to muster out.[6]: 156  When Dr. Binney asked Sampson to deliver a note to General Paterson, she correctly assumed that it would reveal her sex.[6]: 156  In other cases, women who pretended to be men to serve in the army were reprimanded, but Paterson gave her a discharge, a note with some words of advice, and enough money to travel home.[6]: 156  She was honorably discharged at West Point, New York, by General Henry Knox[6]: 156  on October 25, 1783, after a year and a half of service.[15]

An official record of Deborah Sampson Gannet's service as "Robert Shirtliff" from May 20, 1782, to October 25, 1783, appears in the "Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War" Volume 14 p. 164.[16] Sampson married Benjamin Gannett (1757–1837), a Sharon, Massachusetts, farmer, in Stoughton, Massachusetts, on April 7, 1785.[17] After her discharge and marriage to Gannett, Sampson lived the first few years of her civilian life as a typical farmer’s wife. They were the parents of four children: Earl (b. 1786), Mary (b. 1788), Patience (b. 1790), and Susanna Baker Shepherd, whom they adopted after she was orphaned. They lived with Gannett's father on the Gannett family farm, but had limited success because it was smaller than average and the land had been overworked. In January 1792, Sampson petitioned the Massachusetts State Legislature for pay that the army had withheld 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 1783 discharge. A biography by Herman Mann was published in 1797, The Female Review: Life of Deborah Sampson, the Female Soldier in the War of Revolution.[18]

In 1802, Sampson began giving lectures about her wartime service. After extolling the virtues of traditional gender roles for women, she left the stage, returned in her army uniform, then proceeded to perform 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, her husband and she were unable to pay all the family's 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 Sampson's behalf. A military pension had never been requested for a woman, but 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 Sampson on the Massachusetts Invalid Pension Roll at the rate of four dollars a month.

On February 22, 1806, Sampson 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 — approximately $13,800 in 2016). Her petition was initially denied, but when it came before Congress again in 1816 an award of $76.80 a year (about $1,100 in 2016) was approved. With this amount, she was able to repay all her loans and make improvements to the family farm.

Death

Deborah Sampson's grave, Sharon, Massachusetts
Sampson died of yellow fever on April 29, 1827.[19] She was buried at Rock Ridge Cemetery in Sharon, Massachusetts.[20] Four years after Sampson's death, her husband Benjamin Gannett petitioned Congress for a pension as the spouse of a veteran. In 1837, the committee overseeing his petition decreed that the history of the Revolution "furnished no other example of female heroism, fidelity and courage." Gannett was awarded a pension, but died before he could receive it.[21]

Deborah Sampson Gannett served in the United States army during the Revolutionary War. She enlisted as a private under the name Robert Shurtleft, was wounded in the battle of Tarrytown, witnessed the capture of Cornwallis, and was honorably discharged in November 1783.