This Day in History: Deborah Samson, Little-known Heroine
- tara
- Sep 8
- 3 min read
On this day in 1782, a young woman is missing. Did her neighbors suspect where Deborah Samson (or Sampson) was? After all, she’d already been kicked out of her church for dressing like a man and attempting to enlist in the Continental Army.
“The Church consider’d the case of Deborah Sampson . . . who last Spring was accused of dressing in men’s clothes,” her church’s September 3rd record states, “and enlisting as a Soldier in the Army . . . and for some time before behaved verry loose and unchristian like, and at last left our parts in a suden maner, and it is not known among us where she is gone . . . .”
What they didn’t know was that Deborah had succeeded. She was then serving in George Washington’s army as a man named Robert Shurtliff.
Unfortunately, portions of Deborah’s story are hard to tell with accuracy. In 1797, a biography was published about her, but its author admitted that he wrote “hurriedly.” The book is full of mistakes. Despite this handicap, we do know a few things about Deborah.
First, she was born to a poor family in Massachusetts. Depending on whose account you believe, her father either abandoned the family or was lost at sea. Either way, her mother was forced to sell her and her siblings into indentured servitude. Thus it was that Deborah found herself working in Jeremiah and Susannah Thomas’s home, laboring in the fields next to their sons. During her time with the family, she managed to learn some of the boys’ school lessons as they did homework in the evenings. By the time she was 18, she was able to leave the Thomas home. She became a schoolteacher.
She was obsessed with the conflict between Britain and America. She later noted that “my mind became agitated with the enquiry—why a nation, separated from us by an ocean more than three thousand miles in extent, should endeavor to enforce on us plans of subjugation . . . .”
She decided to help. She was tall for a woman and strong from years of working the fields. She determined to sign up as a soldier.
At this point, accounts vary. Some claim she enlisted in 1781, but others claim it was 1782. If the latter, the war was unofficially over, but skirmishes continued anyway. Loyalists were not always ready to admit defeat and the British still occupied New York City. Deborah tried to sign up as “Timothy Thayer” but failed. (It’s unclear why.) In May, she tried again. This time, she signed up in a different town under the name Robert Shurtliff.
In one incident, Deborah was involved in hand-to-hand fighting. She suffered a gash across her forehead and a bullet in her thigh. She allowed the doctors to treat her forehead, but she (at least allegedly) hid the injury to her thigh because she did not want her true identity discovered. Instead, she snuck away and removed the bullet, all on her own. She did an imperfect job, and her leg never fully recovered. She served honorably for many months before her gender was discovered.
Colonel Henry Jackson later affirmed that Robert Shurtliff “had the confidence of his officers and did his duty as a faithful and good soldier.” Deborah received an honorable discharge.
A few years later, Deborah got married. She was suffering in poverty again, at least until her biography was published in 1797. Deborah ended up receiving a pension for her service, and she went on a lecture tour to speak of her experiences. During these speeches, she donned a military uniform and performed military drills.
Many decades later, she was named the Official Heroine of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Yet another little-known Revolutionary War heroine who deserves to be remembered.
Primary Sources:
Alfred F. Young, Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier (2004)
Melissa Lukeman Bohrer, Glory, Passion, and Principle: The Story of Eight Remarkable Women at the Core of the American Revolution (2004)
Paul Della Valle, Massachusetts Troublemakers: Rebels, Reformers, and Radicals from the Bay State (2009).
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