WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Deborah Sampson 0:00:02.400 --> 0:00:06.760 Happy. Saturday. May twenty third is Deborah Samson Day in Massachusetts, 0:00:06.800 --> 0:00:09.879 so since it's May twenty third, we've chosen our episode 0:00:09.920 --> 0:00:14.520 on her as Today's Saturday Classic. Deborah Samson served in 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:17.919 the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War under the name 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:22.160 Robert Shirtliff. This originally came out on July fourth, twenty 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:28.560 twenty two. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:38.920 a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:42.920 I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. This episode 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:46.080 is coming out on July fourth, which is Independence Day 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:49.040 in the US. So since we have an episode coming 0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:52.120 out on the day itself, which hasn't happened in a 0:00:52.200 --> 0:00:54.920 very long time, I thought we'd do something that's both 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:59.760 thematically related and also a listener request. That is Deborah Samson, 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:03.200 who known by her married name of Deborah Samson Gennett 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:08.600 as well. Just as a note upfront, we recognize that 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:12.240 gender is broader and more nuanced than this, and that 0:01:13.080 --> 0:01:16.600 is not a new idea. Deborah Samson was descended from 0:01:16.680 --> 0:01:20.400 multiple people who arrived in North America aboard the Mayflower 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:24.320 in sixteen twenty, at which point, there were indigenous nations 0:01:24.360 --> 0:01:27.920 all over the continent that recognized and continue to recognize 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:31.000 more than two genders. We've also talked about people like 0:01:31.040 --> 0:01:33.760 the Public Universal Friend, who we covered on the show 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:36.679 in twenty twenty, and the Friend lived at the same 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:40.280 time as Deborah Samson did. They described themselves as genderless, 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:44.120 but the communities that Deborah Samson was part of saw 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:47.960 things as very, very very binary. That applies to everything 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:51.880 from people's descriptions of her to how children were educated, 0:01:51.960 --> 0:01:55.760 to laws about dress, and it is central to what 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:59.560 made her famous, which is serving in the Continental Army 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:04.200 as Robert Shirtliffe during the Revolutionary War. Deborah Samson was 0:02:04.200 --> 0:02:09.239 born on December seventeenth, seventeen sixty in Plimpton, Massachusetts, which 0:02:09.280 --> 0:02:12.960 is just inland from Plymouth. Her family spelled their last 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:17.880 name Samsom. The spelling with the pa in the middle 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:21.520 shows up in her life later on. Deborah's parents were 0:02:21.560 --> 0:02:26.000 Jonathan Samson Junior and Deborah Bradford Samson, and as Tracy 0:02:26.080 --> 0:02:28.600 just said, they were both descended from people who had 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:32.960 traveled to North America aboard the Mayflower. The Elder Deborah 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:37.320 Samson was the great granddaughter of Plymouth Colony governor William Bradford. 0:02:37.919 --> 0:02:42.639 Jonathan's ancestors included Miles Standish and John and Priscilla mullens Alden, 0:02:43.040 --> 0:02:46.080 who today are probably best known as characters from the 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:51.120 Courtship of Miles Standish by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Deborah was 0:02:51.200 --> 0:02:55.119 one of seven children and the family was poor. Jonathan 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:58.280 was a farm laborer and claimed that he had been 0:02:58.360 --> 0:03:01.920 cheated out of his inheritance from his late father and 0:03:02.000 --> 0:03:03.960 that his being cheated out of that money was the 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:07.960 root of the family's poverty. But there are probate records 0:03:08.040 --> 0:03:11.480 showing that Jonathan Samson's senior's estate looks like it was 0:03:11.520 --> 0:03:14.520 divided up pretty fairly, and then there are also records 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:18.320 showing that Jonathan sold his property to his brother in 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:25.200 law shortly after his father's death. Family drama. Jonathan Samson 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:28.040 eventually went to sea, and when the young Deborah was 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:31.880 about five, he didn't come back from a voyage. The 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:34.520 family was informed that he had died in a shipwreck, 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:37.720 and it's possible that Deborah believed this was what happened 0:03:37.720 --> 0:03:41.080 to him, but in reality, he had moved to what 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:43.760 is now Maine, where he and a woman named Martha 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:46.520 lived as a married couple, and he had two more 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:51.280 children with her. Deborah's mother could not afford to raise 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:55.000 seven children on her own, so Deborah and at least 0:03:55.040 --> 0:03:57.560 some of her siblings were sent to live with various 0:03:57.600 --> 0:04:01.080 friends and relatives. Than When Deborah was ten, she was 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:05.200 indentured to the Thomas family. Some sources say that she 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:10.040 was indentured to Benjamin Thomas Deecon at First Church of Middleborough, 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:13.280 and others say it was to Jeremiah and Susan Thomas. 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:16.760 There were so many Thomas's living in this area that 0:04:16.839 --> 0:04:20.400 it was nicknamed Thomastown, and Susan was Benjamin's daughter, so 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:24.360 it's understandable that there is some confusion about exactly who 0:04:24.400 --> 0:04:28.520 she was indentured to. This was a large family, with 0:04:28.560 --> 0:04:31.960 more boys than girls, and although Deborah wasn't provided with 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:35.400 an education the way that the family's children were, she 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:38.800 did use their books and school materials to teach herself 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:42.480 to read and write. Most of the documentation we have 0:04:42.720 --> 0:04:46.280 of Deborah's young life comes from a biography by Herman 0:04:46.400 --> 0:04:49.440 Mann that was published for the first time in seventeen 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:54.640 ninety seven. Parts of that biography were definitely fabricated, and 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:56.800 we will be talking about that more and a bit, 0:04:56.960 --> 0:05:00.640 But it does seem like she learned to do various 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:03.320 types of work around the home and the farm during 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:06.760 her indenture, and this included tasks that were more often 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:11.320 done by men and boys, like plowing and whittling. Samson's 0:05:11.400 --> 0:05:14.760 indenture ended when she was eighteen. For the next couple 0:05:14.800 --> 0:05:17.120 of years, she worked as a teacher. During the summers, 0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:19.680 in the window between when crops were planted and when 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:22.880 they were harvested, in the colder months, she worked as 0:05:22.880 --> 0:05:26.840 a spinner and a weaver. She also joined First Baptist 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:30.400 Church of Middleborough on November twelfth, seventeen eighty. That was 0:05:30.520 --> 0:05:34.200 shortly before she turned twenty. Although there was a pretty 0:05:34.200 --> 0:05:37.240 big Baptist community in Middleborough, they had at least three 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:42.240 Baptist churches, most people in the area were Congregationalists, especially 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:45.440 the people who had the most wealth and power and influence. 0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:50.800 Baptists were really seen as outsiders. This was all happening 0:05:50.920 --> 0:05:54.039 during the Revolutionary War, and we don't know much about 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:58.640 how the war's earlier years affected Deborah Sampson. That's seventeen 0:05:58.720 --> 0:06:02.240 ninety seven biography. He does give a lengthy recounting of 0:06:02.279 --> 0:06:06.000 a vivid and violent dream she reportedly had just before 0:06:06.000 --> 0:06:09.680 the Battle of Lexington in seventeen seventy five. Though it's 0:06:09.720 --> 0:06:12.480 not totally clear whether this is a dream she actually 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:15.720 had or whether it's a dramatic embellishment, but if it 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:19.479 really happened, it may have reflected her fear and anxiety 0:06:19.600 --> 0:06:24.360 about what was going on. Although thousands of men joined 0:06:24.400 --> 0:06:26.760 the military at the start of the war, by the 0:06:26.839 --> 0:06:30.680 late seventeen seventies the Continental Army was really struggling to 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:34.479 find recruits. Recruitment happened at the state level, and the 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:39.000 state started drafting people and offering incentives to entice people 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:43.520 to join. This included offering bounties for people who volunteered 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:45.720 to serve in the place of men who had been 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:50.080 drafted but didn't want to go. Although this did motivate 0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:54.200 some people to join, it also caused some issues. For example, 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:58.560 Massachusetts set quotas for how many recruits each town should provide, 0:06:58.880 --> 0:07:00.880 and it was up to the town to decide how 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:04.440 much money they would offer as a bounty. This led 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:07.520 some people to basically shop around for the biggest bounty 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:11.120 they could find. Men were expected to enlist for three 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:14.200 years or until the end of the war, whichever came first. 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:18.720 But some just disappeared as soon as they claimed their bounty. Yeah, 0:07:18.760 --> 0:07:22.840 this caused various issues. In addition to the disappearance of 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:25.280 people who had claimed a bounty and then just vanished, 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:30.200 they were disproportionately enlisting people who were desperate for money 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:35.120 and maybe not people who were who would do well 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:40.960 as soldiers. There was a whole many layers going on 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:45.160 with this. Samson's first attempt to join the army might 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:48.440 have been in pursuit of a bounty. This is documented 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:52.600 in a diary entry by Abner Weston dated January twenty third, 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:57.080 seventeen eighty two. This diary was found in New Hampshire 0:07:57.120 --> 0:07:59.600 in twenty eighteen and then bought by the Museum of 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:03.040 the Amya Revolution in Philadelphia in twenty nineteen. Somehow it 0:08:03.080 --> 0:08:06.360 did not cross my radar for any of the unearthed 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:10.920 episodes that happened during that time. Weston wrote, quote, there 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:14.720 happened an uncommon affair at this time for Deborah Samson 0:08:14.840 --> 0:08:18.800 of this town dressed herself in men's clothes and hired 0:08:18.840 --> 0:08:22.280 herself to Israel Wood to go into the Three years service, 0:08:22.960 --> 0:08:26.440 but being found out, returned the hire and paid the damages. 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:30.600 Other second and third hand accounts add some other details 0:08:30.600 --> 0:08:33.679 to this, including that Samson was living in the home 0:08:33.720 --> 0:08:37.199 of Captain Benjamin Leonard, who employed her as a weaver, 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:39.960 and that a woman named Jenny helped her steal some 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:43.840 of Leonard's son's clothes. Jenny is described as the daughter 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:46.480 of an enslaved woman and as Samson's roommate at the 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:49.360 Leonard house, where Jenny was probably working as a servant. 0:08:49.960 --> 0:08:53.760 After giving her name as Timothy Thayer and receiving her bounty, 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:58.120 Samson went to a tavern and drank, then came home intoxicated, 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:00.920 got into bed with Jenny, and got up and went 0:09:00.960 --> 0:09:04.880 about her business. The next morning, when Timothy Thayer didn't 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:07.600 report to be mustered in, a woman who had been 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:09.920 in the room when he enlisted said she noticed that 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:14.359 he held a pen, just like Deborah Samson. Apparently, Samson's 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:16.680 way of holding a pen was distinctive because of an 0:09:16.760 --> 0:09:20.200 injury to one of her fingers, and after being questioned, 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:24.840 Samson reportedly confessed and returned the bounty money. This was 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:28.480 really a scandal, and although herman Mann's biography gave some 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:31.840 other reasons. Samson may have enlisted for the second time 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:34.040 to try to get away from it. We will get 0:09:34.040 --> 0:09:46.200 to that after a quick sponsor break. On May twentieth, 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:50.839 seventeen eighty two, Robert Shirtliff accepted an enlistment bounty from 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:54.960 the town of Uxbridge, Massachusetts. He was tall, taller than 0:09:54.960 --> 0:09:58.320 the average soldier, but apparently too young to grow facial hair. 0:09:59.040 --> 0:10:02.560 There were no physical exams required to enlist at this point, 0:10:02.880 --> 0:10:05.880 nobody had to provide any kind of documentation of their 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:09.839 name or their age. About a year and a half 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:14.000 would pass before anybody realized that Robert Shirtliffe, whose name 0:10:14.080 --> 0:10:16.439 is spelled a lot of different ways in different various 0:10:16.480 --> 0:10:20.120 records for anybody, realized that he had previously been known 0:10:20.160 --> 0:10:24.400 to everybody before this point as Deborah Sampson. Shirtliffe was 0:10:24.480 --> 0:10:28.360 mustered into the fourth Massachusetts Regiment at Worcestern, Massachusetts. Three 0:10:28.440 --> 0:10:31.760 days later, he marched with the regiment to West Point, 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:34.199 where he was assigned to Captain George Webb's company of 0:10:34.320 --> 0:10:38.160 light Infantry. The light Infantry was seen as an elite 0:10:38.240 --> 0:10:41.120 group made up of young agile men who could move quickly, 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:45.959 do reconnaissance and engage in skirmishes with the enemy. Webb's 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:48.880 company spent most of their time in the Hudson River Valley. 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:53.280 The Battle of Yorktown had ended the previous fall, and 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:56.120 that is seen as the last major battle of the 0:10:56.160 --> 0:10:59.959 Revolutionary War and as a decisive victory for the United States, 0:11:00.320 --> 0:11:04.080 but the war did not actually end for almost two 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:08.000 more years after that. Much of the Hudson River Valley 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:12.160 was neutral ground between US territory and New York City, 0:11:12.160 --> 0:11:14.959 which was still being held by the British, but there 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:17.760 were lots of troops from both sides in this area. 0:11:18.120 --> 0:11:20.640 There were also French troops who were allied with the 0:11:20.760 --> 0:11:25.040 United States, as well as indigenous peoples. Some were on 0:11:25.120 --> 0:11:27.080 the sides of the British and some of the United States. 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:29.800 In this particular area, they were more likely to be 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:33.880 allied with or otherwise support the British. Although this area 0:11:33.960 --> 0:11:37.080 didn't see any major battles in seventeen eighty two or 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:42.080 seventeen eighty three, there were lots of smaller skirmishes. Later on, 0:11:42.320 --> 0:11:45.760 Herman Mann's biography of Deborah Sampson would recount a dramatic 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:49.240 tale of her being seriously wounded with a head injury 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:53.400 and two musket balls lodged in her thigh. She was 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:55.880 so afraid that her sex would be discovered that she 0:11:56.000 --> 0:11:59.599 thought about taking her own life with a pistol. Instead, 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:02.160 she made her way to a French encampment, where she 0:12:02.200 --> 0:12:05.080 allowed a French doctor to treat and dress her head 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:08.960 wound before sneaking away with some wine, a penknife, and 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:13.000 a needle to extract the musket balls herself. She was 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:15.400 able to remove one of them and treat and dress 0:12:15.440 --> 0:12:17.720 the wound, but the other remained in her body for 0:12:17.760 --> 0:12:21.880 the rest of her life. It is extremely likely that 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:26.040 during her time as Robert Shirtliff, Deborah Sampson really was 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:30.240 wounded in action and really was disabled afterward. She had 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:33.360 to document all that to receive pensions for her service, 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:37.120 which she did. We'll talk about that more later. However, 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:42.679 this part of Samson's biography is uncannily similar to another work, 0:12:42.720 --> 0:12:47.400 which was titled The Female Soldier, that describes the experiences 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:50.680 of Hannah Snell, who joined the British Army as James 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:53.960 Gray in seventeen forty five and fought against the Jacobites. 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:59.160 Back in Middleborough, Massachusetts, First Baptist Church was deciding what 0:12:59.360 --> 0:13:03.120 to do about Deborah Sampson's earlier enlistment as Timothy Thayer 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:07.480 the Church Minutes from September third, seventeen eighty two read quote. 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:11.200 The Church considered the case of Deborah Sampson, who, last 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:14.680 spring was accused of dressing in men's clothes and enlisting 0:13:14.720 --> 0:13:17.840 in the army, And although she was not convicted yet, 0:13:17.920 --> 0:13:21.080 was strongly suspected of being guilty, and for some time 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:24.840 before behaved very loose and unchristian like, and at last 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:27.480 left our parts in a sudden manner. And it is 0:13:27.559 --> 0:13:30.280 not known among us where she is gone. And after 0:13:30.440 --> 0:13:34.400 considerable discourse, it appeared that as several brethren had labored 0:13:34.400 --> 0:13:39.000 with her before she went away without obtaining satisfaction, concluded 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:42.440 that it is the church's duty to withdraw fellowship until 0:13:42.480 --> 0:13:46.559 she returns and makes Christian satisfaction. Okay, that means they 0:13:46.559 --> 0:13:51.120 basically kicked her out, and still she apologized and was 0:13:51.160 --> 0:13:54.280 absolved for having done wrong. A couple of other notes 0:13:54.280 --> 0:13:58.440 on this. Today, the word loose has sexual connotations when 0:13:58.480 --> 0:14:00.440 it's used in this kind of a contact, but at 0:14:00.480 --> 0:14:02.720 the time it was more of a general description of 0:14:02.760 --> 0:14:07.240 bad behavior, and in terms of a conviction. Cross dressing 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:11.240 had been outlawed in Massachusetts since the sixteen nineties. The 0:14:11.320 --> 0:14:14.600 prohibition on cross dressing also traced back to a verse 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:18.440 in the Biblical Book of Deuteronomy, which described men dressing 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:22.880 in women's clothes and vice versa as an abomination. To 0:14:23.000 --> 0:14:26.880 return to Samson's time as Robert Shirtliff, that injury made 0:14:26.920 --> 0:14:30.040 it impossible to keep up with the light infantry, so 0:14:30.160 --> 0:14:33.040 Shirtlift seems to have convinced someone to assign him to 0:14:33.040 --> 0:14:36.000 the task of caring for a wounded soldier who could 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:40.360 not be moved. After that, Shirtlift was given another assignment 0:14:40.400 --> 0:14:43.040 in seventeen eighty three, this time working as a waiter 0:14:43.160 --> 0:14:47.400 for General John Patterson. This wasn't a food service position, 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:51.360 it was more like a personal servant. Shirtliff accompanied Patterson 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:53.720 in his unit to Philadelphia, which at the time was 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:58.640 the US capital. An armistice went into effect on April nineteenth, 0:14:58.680 --> 0:15:03.280 seventeen eighty three, and as the US started demobilizing its forces, 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:07.720 it furloughed troops without fully paying people for their services, 0:15:08.240 --> 0:15:12.040 also without a clear plan for funding pensions for anybody. 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:15.680 Demands for pay and for better conditions were part of 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:19.360 a mutiny along the Pennsylvania line in seventeen eighty three, 0:15:19.760 --> 0:15:22.760 and Patterson's troops were sent to Philadelphia to try to 0:15:22.800 --> 0:15:27.520 put that mutiny down. In Philadelphia, Robert Shirtliffe became ill 0:15:27.560 --> 0:15:31.520 with a fever and delirium and was hospitalized. The cause 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:34.520 isn't clear, although there were epidemics of both measles and 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:38.800 smallpox in Philadelphia at that time. Measles is the more 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:41.520 likely of the two, since the various descriptions of this 0:15:41.680 --> 0:15:45.960 don't include typical smallpox symptoms, and George Washington had ordered 0:15:46.000 --> 0:15:49.000 the troops to be inoculated against it. Yeah, it could 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:52.120 have been something totally else, but those two diseases really 0:15:52.120 --> 0:15:56.400 were rampant. While working at a hospital in Philadelphia, doctor 0:15:56.480 --> 0:15:59.800 barnabas Binny discovered that one of his patients, known as 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:04.000 Robert Shirtliffe, was wearing a breastbinding, but he kept that 0:16:04.120 --> 0:16:08.360 a secret. It is not totally clear how Samson's commanding 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:13.280 officers eventually learned her identity. In Man's book, Benny gave 0:16:13.320 --> 0:16:16.520 her a letter that explained the whole situation and told 0:16:16.520 --> 0:16:19.560 her to deliver it to General Patterson, and she did 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:22.800 that even though she was pretty sure the letter was 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:28.000 saying that she was a woman. Later, even more romanticized 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:30.520 versions of this claimed that she gave the letter not 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:35.800 to Patterson but to George Washington himself, whatever those details were, 0:16:36.120 --> 0:16:40.560 general Henry Knox granted Robert Shirtliffe an honorable discharge on 0:16:40.600 --> 0:16:44.240 October twenty third, seventeen eighty three. And this is not 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:47.960 at all how the Continental Army or the various militias 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:51.320 generally dealt with women who tried to enlist, or with 0:16:51.440 --> 0:16:54.760 people who successfully enlisted but were later discovered to have 0:16:54.800 --> 0:16:58.560 female bodies. It was way more common for people to 0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:03.360 be publicly shamed, charged with crimes including fraud and cross dressing, 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:08.800 or subjected to just deeply humiliating and traumatizing physical examinations 0:17:09.280 --> 0:17:13.600 which really were just sexual assaults. It's possible that there 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:16.760 are other women who managed to serve undetected in the 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:20.440 Revolutionary War, or people who might describe themselves as non 0:17:20.480 --> 0:17:25.040 binary or as transgendermen today, but the honorable discharge of 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:30.679 Robert Shirtliff is really unique. After being discharged, Samson returned 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:33.399 to Massachusetts, and as far as we know, once she 0:17:33.480 --> 0:17:37.199 got there, she resumed her life as Deborah Sampson. The 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:40.600 first public report of her service in the Revolutionary War 0:17:40.720 --> 0:17:44.720 was published just a few months later. It named Robert Shirtliffe, 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:48.720 but it did not mention Samson's name. Quote for particular reasons. 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:51.600 It doesn't say what they are, just that they're particular. 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:57.040 This was printed in the Independent Gazette or the New 0:17:57.119 --> 0:18:01.040 York Journal revived on January tenth, seventeen e and it 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:04.720 was picked up by other newspapers later on. It began quote, 0:18:05.040 --> 0:18:08.800 an extraordinary instance of virtue in a female soldier has 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:12.480 occurred lately in the American Army in the Massachusetts Line. 0:18:13.040 --> 0:18:16.679 Vis a lively, comely young nymph, nineteen years of age, 0:18:16.920 --> 0:18:21.280 dressed in man's apparel, has been discovered, and what redounds 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:23.639 to her honor. She has served in the character of 0:18:23.680 --> 0:18:27.760 a soldier for near three years, undiscovered, during which time 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:33.000 she displayed herself with activity, alertness, chastity, and valor, having 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:36.800 been in several skirmishes with the enemy, and received two wounds, 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:39.879 a small shot remaining in her to this day. She 0:18:40.040 --> 0:18:43.920 is a remarkable vigilant soldier on her post, and always 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:47.800 gained the admiration and applause of her officers. Was never 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:50.640 found in liquor, and always kept company with the most 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:55.560 upright and temperate soldiers. This report describes her illness and 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:59.280 the discovery of her sex, and her honorable discharge, before 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:01.840 offering an ex explanation for why she did all of 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:05.440 this quote. The cause of her personating a man, it 0:19:05.560 --> 0:19:08.560 is said, proceeded from the rigor of her parents, who 0:19:08.600 --> 0:19:12.200 exerted their prerogative to induce her to marriage with a 0:19:12.240 --> 0:19:16.920 young man she had conceived a great antipathy for, together 0:19:16.960 --> 0:19:20.080 with her being a remarkable heroine and warmly attached to 0:19:20.160 --> 0:19:22.400 the cause of her country, in the service of which 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:26.760 it must be acknowledged, she gained reputation, and no doubt 0:19:27.119 --> 0:19:30.000 will be noticed by the compilers of the history of 0:19:30.040 --> 0:19:34.679 our Grand Revolution. I have so many feelings about that 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:38.840 right up. A couple of factual notes on this. Samson 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:41.720 was about twenty one when she enlisted, rather than nineteen, 0:19:42.359 --> 0:19:45.240 and although recruits were expected to serve for three years, 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:48.760 Robert Shirtliff's time in the army is documented it closer 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:53.240 to eighteen months. Samson's parents also weren't really involved in 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:55.879 her life at all, so this story about fleeing an 0:19:55.960 --> 0:19:59.119 unwonted marriage reads more like a literary trope and a 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:02.160 way to make readers or sympathetic to her, Rather than 0:20:02.200 --> 0:20:06.320 any real explanation of her reasoning. We'll talk about Samson's 0:20:06.400 --> 0:20:20.040 post Revolutionary war life after another quick sponsor break. Deborah 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:24.880 Sampson married Benjamin Gannette of Sharon, Massachusetts, on April seventh, 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:28.920 seventeen eighty five. There is a gown in the collections 0:20:28.960 --> 0:20:32.439 of Historic New England that may have been her wedding dress. 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:35.680 Was originally made as an open gown to be worn 0:20:35.800 --> 0:20:38.639 with a petticoat around seventeen seventy, and then it was 0:20:38.800 --> 0:20:42.160 remade as a full dress without that open front about 0:20:42.160 --> 0:20:45.439 fifteen years later. Then it was altered again in the 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:48.479 seventeen eighties, presumably so Deborah could get married in it. 0:20:48.520 --> 0:20:51.600 So the dress from there was passed down within the family. 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:54.280 Some of her descendants even wore it for things like 0:20:54.480 --> 0:20:59.840 historical reenactments and other events. Deborah and Benjamin had three children, Earl, 0:21:00.160 --> 0:21:04.040 Mary and Patience, and they adopted Susannah Shepherd after her 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:08.040 mother died. As had been the case in Deborah's own childhood, 0:21:08.320 --> 0:21:11.320 the family struggled financially, which is one of the reasons 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:13.879 she worked so hard to get the benefits that she 0:21:13.960 --> 0:21:17.800 was entitled to as a veteran. This started with petitioning 0:21:17.800 --> 0:21:22.040 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for backpay in seventeen ninety two. 0:21:22.280 --> 0:21:25.800 She was awarded thirty four pounds. Over the course of 0:21:25.840 --> 0:21:29.520 seventeen ninety seven and seventeen ninety eight, Gannett applied for 0:21:29.560 --> 0:21:33.480 a pension under the Invalid Pension Act of seventeen ninety three. 0:21:34.280 --> 0:21:37.439 It's not clear why four years passed between when the 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:40.560 law was passed and when she submitted an application, But 0:21:40.640 --> 0:21:43.840 this process could be really onerous, so we said earlier, 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:45.600 there was a lot of stuff that you had to document. 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:48.879 Sometimes that documentation was really hard to track down or 0:21:48.920 --> 0:21:52.320 didn't exist. It's possible she had trouble finding a lawyer 0:21:52.359 --> 0:21:55.320 who was willing to help her with it. Herman Mann's 0:21:55.320 --> 0:21:58.720 biography of her was almost certainly written to support this 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:02.320 pension application, As we said earlier, It was published in 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:06.760 seventeen ninety seven, and its full title was The Female Review, 0:22:07.080 --> 0:22:10.520 or Memoirs of an American Young Lady whose life and 0:22:10.680 --> 0:22:15.480 character are peculiarly distinguished. Being a Continental soldier for nearly 0:22:15.560 --> 0:22:19.080 three years in the Late American War, during which time 0:22:19.160 --> 0:22:22.280 she performed the duties of every department into which she 0:22:22.359 --> 0:22:26.840 was called with punctual exactness, fidelity, and honor, and preserved 0:22:26.880 --> 0:22:31.520 her chastity inviolate by the most artful concealment of her sex, 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:35.960 with an appendix containing characteristic traits by different hands, her 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:41.480 taste for economy, principles of domestic education, etc. I do 0:22:41.680 --> 0:22:44.600 love the long title. I do too. They're so funny. 0:22:45.840 --> 0:22:49.920 This book is so romanticized, and it has so much 0:22:50.000 --> 0:22:52.639 in common with other books in print at the time. 0:22:53.800 --> 0:22:57.120 Not just the one we mentioned earlier, there were multiple others. 0:22:57.440 --> 0:22:59.919 There are some critics today that have described it not 0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:03.399 as a biography or a memoir, but as a novel. 0:23:04.359 --> 0:23:06.639 Seems like Man himself might have even thought of it 0:23:06.680 --> 0:23:09.480 this way too, and he later talked about it having 0:23:09.600 --> 0:23:12.199 just been rushed into print without enough time to do 0:23:12.240 --> 0:23:14.919 a good job with it. Some parts of it are 0:23:15.000 --> 0:23:18.919 questionable but not totally impossible, like the vivid dream that 0:23:18.960 --> 0:23:22.080 we mentioned and the sneaking a way to remove a 0:23:22.160 --> 0:23:25.879 musket ball also in that category, or things like a 0:23:26.000 --> 0:23:30.080 romantic interlude involving a young woman from Baltimore who falls 0:23:30.080 --> 0:23:32.520 in love with this patient known as Robert Shirtliff at 0:23:32.520 --> 0:23:35.800 a military hospital in Philadelphia, who she, of course believes 0:23:35.800 --> 0:23:40.719 to be a man. There's so many dramatic and thrilling tales. Yeah, 0:23:40.960 --> 0:23:43.639 there are a lot of them, and several people have 0:23:43.760 --> 0:23:46.320 traced and this also save dramatic tale is in this 0:23:46.440 --> 0:23:49.360 other book that was in circulation at the time. There 0:23:49.400 --> 0:23:53.119 are parts of this writing that are flatly untrue. Like 0:23:53.280 --> 0:23:56.879 Man claims Deborah Samson Gennett was at the Battle of Yorktown, 0:23:57.200 --> 0:24:00.800 which was over long before she enlisted. There's also an 0:24:00.840 --> 0:24:03.880 account of rescuing a white woman who was held captive 0:24:03.920 --> 0:24:07.879 by indigenous people and marrying her, but putting off consummating 0:24:07.880 --> 0:24:10.879 the marriage until it could be properly solemnized in the city. 0:24:11.800 --> 0:24:14.119 In the words of Man's book quote, on their return 0:24:14.119 --> 0:24:17.800 to Philadelphia, they purchased her a suit of clothes, but she, 0:24:18.280 --> 0:24:22.000 unable to express her gratitude, received them on her knees 0:24:22.040 --> 0:24:25.439 and was doubtless glad to relinquish her sham marriage and 0:24:25.520 --> 0:24:27.760 to be sent to her uncle, who she said lived 0:24:27.760 --> 0:24:32.160 in James City. This is almost certainly just completely fabricated. 0:24:33.320 --> 0:24:37.440 Man commissioned a portrait of Gannett by folk artist Joseph Stone, 0:24:37.800 --> 0:24:41.160 which became the basis for the engraving for the book's frontispiece. 0:24:41.280 --> 0:24:44.120 This portrait still exists in the collection of the Rhode 0:24:44.160 --> 0:24:47.720 Island Historical Society today. It shows her in a feminine 0:24:47.760 --> 0:24:51.520 white dress with long brown hair that curls softly around 0:24:51.520 --> 0:24:55.359 her cheeks and her shoulders, blue eyes, fair skin with 0:24:55.520 --> 0:24:59.000 rosy cheeks, and a pretty prominent jaw. It's framed with 0:24:59.040 --> 0:25:02.040 some patriotic and elishments, like an eagle bearing a shield 0:25:02.080 --> 0:25:05.760 that's decorated with stars and stripes. Mann was not the 0:25:05.760 --> 0:25:09.360 only writer trying to support Deborah Sampson Gannett's pension efforts. 0:25:10.040 --> 0:25:14.200