Deborah Sampson Gannett, aka Private Robert Shurtlliff

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. This episode
is coming out on July fourth, which is Independence Day
in the US. So since we have an episode coming

(00:24):
out on the day itself, which hasn't happened in a
very long time, I thought we'd do something that's both
thematically related and also a listener request. That is Deborah Sampson,
who's known by her married name of Deborah Sampson Gannett
as well. Just as a note up front, we recognize
that gender is broader and more nuanced than this, and

(00:47):
that was not that is not a new idea. Deborah
Sampson was descended from multiple people who arrived in North
America aboard the Mayflower in sixteen twenty, at which point
there were indigenous nations all over the continent that recognized
and continued to recognize more than two genders. We've also
talked about people like the public Universal Friend, who we

(01:07):
covered on the show in and the Friend lived at
the same time as Deborah Sampson did. They described themselves
as genderless, but the communities that Deborah Sampson was part
of saw things as very, very, very binary. That applies
to everything from people's descriptions of her to how children
were educated, to laws about dress, and it is central

(01:30):
to what made her famous, which is serving in the
Continental Army as Robert Shirtless during the Revolutionary War. Deborah
Sampson was born on December seventeenth, seventeen sixty in Plympton, Massachusetts,
which is just inland from Plymouth. Her family spelled their
last name s A M. S O N. The spelling

(01:51):
with the P in the middle shows up in her
life later on. Deborah's parents were Jonathan Samson Jr. And
Deborah Bradford Sampson, and as Tracy just said, they were
both descended from people who had traveled to North America
aboard the Mayflower. The Elder. Deborah Sampson was the great
granddaughter of Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford. Jonathan's ancestors included

(02:14):
Miles Standish and John and Priscilla Mullins Alden, who today
are probably best known as characters from the Courtship of
Miles Standish by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Debra was one of
seven children, and the family was poor. Jonathan was a
farm laborer and claimed that he had been cheated out
of his inheritance from his late father and that his

(02:37):
being cheated out of that money was the root of
the family's poverty. But there are probate records showing that
Jonathan Sampson Senior's estate looks like it was divided up
pretty fairly, And then there are also records showing that
Jonathan sold his property to his brother in law shortly
after his father's death. Family drama um Jonathan sam And

(03:00):
eventually went to see and when the young Deborah was
about five, he didn't come back from a voyage. The
family was informed that he had died in a shipwreck,
and it's possible that Deborah believed this was what happened
to him, but in reality, he had moved to what
is now Maine, where he and a woman named Martha
lived as a married couple, and he had two more

(03:21):
children with her. Deborah's mother could not afford to raise
seven children on her own, so Deborah and at least
some of her siblings were sent to live with various
friends and relatives. Then, when Deborah was ten, she was
indentured to the Thomas family. Some sources say that she
was indentured to Benjamin Thomas, deacon at First Church of Middleborough,

(03:45):
and others say it was to Jeremiah and Susan Thomas.
There were so many Thomas's living in this area that
it was nicknamed Thomas Town, and Susan was Benjamin's daughter,
so it's understandable that there is some confusion about exactly
who she was. In Den shared two. This was a
large family with more boys than girls, and although Deborah

(04:05):
wasn't provided with an education the way that the family's
children were, she did use their books and school materials
to teach herself to read and write. Most of the
documentation we have of Deborah's young life comes from a
biography by Herman Man that was published for the first
time in seventeen nineties. Seven. Parts of that biography were

(04:27):
definitely fabricated, and we will be talking about that more
and a bit. But it does seem like she learned
to do various types of work around the home and
the farm during her indenture, and this included tasks that
were more often done by men and boys, like plowing
and whittling. Sampson's indenture ended when she was eighteen. For

(04:49):
the next couple of years she worked as a teacher.
During the summers, in the window between when crops were
planted and when they were harvested, in the colder months,
she worked as a spinner and a weaver. She also
joined First Baptist Church of Middleborough on November twelfth, seventeen eighty.
That was shortly before she turned twenty. Although there was
a pretty big Baptist community in Middleborough, they had at

(05:11):
least three Baptist churches, most people in the area were Congregationalists,
especially the people who had the most wealth and power
and influence. Baptists were really seen as outsiders. This was
all happening during the Revolutionary War, and we don't know
much about how the wars earlier years affected Deborah Sampson.

(05:32):
That seventeen nine biography does give a lengthy recounting of
a vivid and violent dream she reportedly had just before
the Battle of Lexington in seventeen seventy five, though it's
not totally clear whether this is a dream she actually
had or whether it's a dramatic embellishment, but if it
really happened, it may have reflected her fear and anxiety

(05:54):
about what was going on. Although thousands of men joined
the military at the start of the war, by the
late seventeen seventies, the Continental Army was really struggling to
find recruits. Recruitment happened at the state level in the
States started drafting people and offering incentives to entice people
to join. This included offering bounties for people who volunteered

(06:18):
to serve in the place of men who had been
drafted but didn't want to go. Although this did motivate
some people to join, it also caused some issues. For example,
Massachusetts set quotas for how many recruits each town should provide,
and it was up to the towns to decide how
much money they would offer as a bounty. This led

(06:39):
some people to basically shop around for the biggest bounty
they could find. Men were expected to enlist for three
years or until the end of the war, whichever came first,
but some just disappeared as soon as they claimed their bounty.
This caused various issues. In addition to the disappearance of
people who had claimed a bounty and then just van

(07:00):
they were disproportionately enlisting people who were desperate for money
and maybe not people who were uh who would do
well as soldiers. Um, there was a whole many layers
going on with this. Sampson's first attempt to join the
army might have been in pursuit of a bounty. This

(07:22):
is documented in a diary entry by Abner Weston dated
January two. This diary was found in New Hampshire in
eighteen and then bought by the Museum of the American
Revolution in Philadelphia, And somehow it did not cross my
radar for any of the unearthed episodes that happened during

(07:42):
that time. Weston wrote, quote, there happened an uncommon affair
at this time for Deborah Sampson of this town dress
herself in men's clothes and hired herself to Israel Wood
to go into the three years service, but being found out,
returned the higher and paid the damages. Other second and

(08:03):
third hand accounts add some other details to this, including
that Sampson was living in the home of Captain Benjamin Leonard,
who employed her as a weaver, and that a woman
named Jenny helped her steal some of Leonard's son's clothes.
Jenny has described as the daughter of an enslaved woman
and as Samson's roommate at the Leonard House, where Jenny
was probably working as a servant. After giving her name

(08:26):
as Timothy Thayer and receiving her bounty, Sampson went to
a tavern and drink, then came home intoxicated, got into
bed with Jenny, and got up and went about her business.
The next morning, when Timothy Thayer didn't report to be
mustered in, a woman who had been in the room
when he enlisted said she noticed that he held a pen,

(08:46):
just like Deborah Sampson. Apparently, Sampson's way of holding a
pen was distinctive because of an injury to one of
her fingers, and after being questioned, Samson reportedly confessed and
returned the bounty money. This was lea scandal, and although
herman Mann's biography gave some other reasons Sampson may have
enlisted for the second time to try to get away

(09:07):
from it. We will get to that after a quick
sponsor break onmate Robert Shirtlift accepted an enlistment bounty from
the town of Uxbridge, Massachusetts. He was tall, taller than

(09:29):
the average soldier, but apparently too young to grow facial hair.
There were no physical exams required to enlist. At this point,
nobody had to provide any kind of documentation of their
name or their age. About a year and a half
would passed before anybody realized that Robert Shirtliff, whose name
is spelled a lot of different ways in different various records,

(09:52):
before anybody realized that he had previously been known to
everybody before this point as Deborah Sampson. Shirtliff was mustered
in to the fourth Massachusetts Regiment at Worcester, Massachusetts. Three
days later, he marched with the regiment to West Point,
where he was assigned to captain George Webbs Company of
Light Infantry. The Light Infantry was seen as an elite

(10:13):
group made up of young, agilemen who could move quickly,
do reconnaissance, and engage in skirmishes with the enemy. Webbs
Company spent most of their time in the Hudson River Valley.
The Battle of Yorktown had ended the previous fall, and
that is seen as the last major battle of the
Revolutionary War and as a decisive victory for the United States,

(10:35):
but the war did not actually end for almost two
more years. After that. Much of the Hudson River Valley
was neutral ground between US territory and New York City,
which was still being held by the British, but there
were lots of troops from both sides in this area.
There were also French troops who were allied with the

(10:55):
United States, as well as indigenous people's Some were on
the sides of the British and some of the United States.
In this particular area, they were more likely to be
allied with or otherwise support the British. Although this area
didn't see any major battles in seventy two or seventeen
eighty three, there were lots of smaller skirmishes. Later on,

(11:17):
Herman Mann's biography of Deborah Sampson would recount a dramatic
tale of her being seriously wounded with a head injury
and two musket balls lodged in her thigh. She was
so afraid that her sex would be discovered that she
thought about taking her own life with a pistol. Instead,
she made her way to a French encampment, where she
allowed a French doctor to treat and dress her head

(11:40):
wound before sneaking away with some wine, a pen knife,
and a needle to extract the musket balls herself. She
was able to remove one of them and treat and
dress the wound, but the other remained in her body
for the rest of her life. It is extremely likely
that during her time as Robert Shirtlift, Deborah Stamps really

(12:00):
was wounded in action and really was disabled afterward. She
had to document all that to receive pensions for her service,
which she did. We'll talk about that more later. However,
this part of Sampson's biography is uncannily similar to another work,
which was titled The Female Soldier, that describes the experiences

(12:22):
of Hannah Snell, who joined the British Army as James
Gray in seventeen forty five and fought against the Jacobites.
Back in Middleborough, Massachusetts, First Baptist Church was deciding what
to do about Deborah Sampson's earlier enlistment as Timothy Thayer.
The Church minutes from September three two read quote. The

(12:42):
church considered the case of Deborah Sampson, who last spring
was accused of dressing in men's clothes and enlisting in
the army, and although she was not convicted yet, was
strongly suspected of being guilty, and for some time before
behaved very loose and unchristian like and at last after
our parts in a sudden manner, and it is not

(13:02):
known among us where she is gone. And after considerable discourse,
it appeared that as several brethren had labored with her
before she went away without obtaining satisfaction, concluded that it
is the church's duty to withdraw fellowship until she returns
and makes Christians satisfaction. Okay, that means they basically kicked
her out and Sills, she apologized and uh was resolved

(13:26):
for having done wrong. A couple of other notes on this. Today,
the word loose has sexual connotations when it's used in
this kind of a context, but at the time it
was more of a general description of bad behavior and
in terms of a conviction. Cross dressing had been outlawed
in Massachusetts since the sixteen nineties. The prohibition on cross

(13:47):
dressing also traced back to a verse in the biblical
Book of Deuteronomy, which described men dressing in women's clothes
and vice versa as an abomination. To return to Samson's time,
as Robert Shirtlift, that injury made it impossible to keep
up with the light infantry, so shirt Lift seems to
have convinced someone to assign him to the task of

(14:08):
caring for a wounded soldier who could not be moved.
After that, Shirtlift was given another assignment in seventeen eighty three,
this time working as a waiter for General John Patterson.
This wasn't a food service position, it was more like
a personal servant. Shirtlift accompanied Patterson and his unit to Philadelphia,
which at the time was the US capital. An armistice

(14:31):
went into effect on April nineteen, seventeen eighty three, and
as the US started demobilizing its forces, it furloughed troops
without fully paying people for their services, also without a
clear plan for funding pensions for anybody. Demands for pay
and for better conditions were part of a mutiny along

(14:52):
the Pennsylvania Line in seventeen eighty three, and Patterson's troops
were sent to Philadelphia to try to put that mutiny down.
In Philadelphia, Robert Shirtlift became ill with a fever and
delirium and was hospitalized. The cause isn't clear, although there
were epidemics of both measles and smallpox in Philadelphia at
that time. Measles is the more likely of the two,

(15:14):
since the various descriptions of this don't include typical smallpox symptoms,
and George Washington had ordered the troops to be inoculated
against it. Yeah, it could have been something totally else,
but those two diseases really were rampant. While working at
a hospital in Philadelphia, Dr Barnabas Benny discovered that one
of his patients, known as Robert Shirtliff, was wearing a breastbinding,

(15:38):
but he kept that a secret. It is not totally
clear how Samson's commanding officers eventually learned her identity. In
Man's book, Benny gave her a letter that explained the
whole situation and told her to deliver it to General Patterson,
and she did that even though she was pretty sure
the letter was saying that she was a woman. Later,

(16:01):
even more romanticized versions of this claimed that she gave
the letter not to Patterson but to George Washington himself.
Whatever those details were, General Henry Knox granted Robert Shirtliff
an honorable discharge on October sev three. And this is
not at all how the Continental Army or the various

(16:22):
militias generally dealt with women who tried to enlist, or
with people who successfully enlisted but were later discovered to
have female bodies. It was way more common for people
to be publicly shamed, charged with crimes including fraud and
cross dressing, or subjected to just deeply humiliating and traumatizing

(16:42):
physical examinations, which really we're just sexual assaults. It's possible
that there are other women who managed to serve undetected
in the Revolutionary War, or people who might describe themselves
as non binary or as transgender men today, but the
honorable discharge Robert Shirtliff is really unique. After being discharged,

(17:04):
Sampson returned to Massachusetts, and as far as we know,
once she got there, she resumed her life as Deborah Sampson.
The first public report of her service in the Revolutionary
War was published just a few months later. It named
Robert Shirtliffe, but it did not mention Sampson's name quote
for particular reasons. It doesn't say what they are, just

(17:25):
that they're particular. This was printed in the Independent Gazette
or the New York Journal Revived on January, and it
was picked up by other newspapers later on. It began quote,
an extraordinary instance of virtue in a female soldier has
occurred lately in the American Army in the Massachusetts Line.

(17:48):
VI is a lively, comely young nymph nineteen years of age,
dressed in man's apparel, has been discovered and what redounds
to her honor. She has served in the character of
a soldier for near three years undiscovered, during which time
she displayed herself with activity, alertness, chastity, and valor, having
been in several skirmishes with the enemy, and received two wounds,

(18:11):
a small shot remaining in her to this day. She
is a remarkable vigilant soldier on her post, and always
gained the admiration and applause of her officers, was never
found in liquor, and always kept company with the most
upright and temperate soldiers. This report describes her illness and
the discovery of her sex, and her honorable discharge, before

(18:34):
offering an explanation for why she did all of this quote.
The cause of her personating a man, it is said,
proceeded from the rigor of her parents, who exerted their
prerogative to induce her to marriage with a young man
she had conceived a great antipathy for, together with her
being a remarkable heroine and warmly attached to the cause

(18:55):
of her country in the service of which it must
be acknowledged, she gained wreck ataent, and no doubt will
be noticed by the compilers of the history of our
Grand Revolution. I have so many feelings about that. Right up.
A couple of factual notes on this. Sampson was about
twenty one when she enlisted, rather than nineteen, and although

(19:17):
recruits were expected to serve for three years, Robert Shirtlift's
time in the army is documented, it closer to eighteen months.
Samson's parents also weren't really involved in her life at all,
so this story about fleeing an unwanted marriage reads more
like a literary trope and a way to make readers
more sympathetic to her, rather than any real explanation of

(19:38):
her reasoning. We'll talk about Samson's post revolutionary war life
after another quick sponsor break. Deborah Sampson married Benjamin Gannett
of Sharon, Massachusetts, on April seven, seventeen eighty five. There

(20:01):
is a gown in the collections of Historic New England
that may have been her wedding dress. Was originally made
as an open gown to be worn with a petticoat
around seventeen seventy and then it was remade as a
full dress without that open front about fifteen years later.
Then it was altered again in the seventeen eighties, presumably
so Deborah could get married in it. So the dress

(20:24):
from there was passed down within the family. Some of
her descendants even wore it for things like historical re
enactments and other events. Deborah and Benjamin had three children,
Earl Mary and Patience, and they adopted Susannah Shephard after
her mother died. As had been the case in Deborah's
own childhood, the family struggled financially, which is one of

(20:45):
the reasons she worked so hard to get the benefits
that she was entitled to as a veteran. This started
with petitioning the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for back pay in
seventeen ninety two. She was awarded thirty four pounds. Over
the course of seventeen ninety seven and seventeen ninety eight,
Ghanett applied for a pension under the Invalid Pension Act

(21:06):
of seventeen ninety three. It's not clear why four years
passed between when the law was passed and when she
submitted an application, but this process could be really onerous,
So we said earlier, there was a lot of stuff
that you had to document. Sometimes that documentation was really
hard to track down or didn't exist. It's possible she
had trouble finding a lawyer who was willing to help

(21:28):
her with it. Herman Mann's biography of her was almost
certainly written to support this pension application. As we said earlier,
it was published in seventeen seven, and it's full title
was The Female Review or Memoirs of an American young
Lady whose life and character are peculiarly distinguished, being a

(21:48):
continental soldier for nearly three years in the Late American War,
during which time she performed the duties of every department
into which she was called with punctual exactness, fidelity, and honor,
and preserved her chastity inviolate by the most artful concealment
of her sex, with an appendix containing characteristic traits by

(22:09):
different hands, her taste for economy, principles of domestic education,
et cetera. I do love the long title too, They're
so funny. This book is so romanticized, and it has
so much in common with other books in print at
the time, not just the one we mentioned earlier. There

(22:30):
were multiple others. There are some critics today that have
described it not as a biography or a memoir, but
as a novel. It seems like Man himself might have
even thought of it this way too, and he later
talked about it having just been rushed into print without
enough time to do a good job with it. Some
parts of it are questionable but not totally impossible, like

(22:52):
the vivid dream that we mentioned and the sneaking away
to remove a musket ball. Also in that category are
things like a romantic interlude involving a young woman from
Baltimore who falls in love with this patient known as
Robert Shirtlift at a military hospital in Philadelphia. She of
course believes to be a man. There's so many dramatic

(23:13):
and thrilling tales. There are a lot of them, and
that several people have traced. And this also saved dramatic tale.
Isn't this other book that was in circulation at the time.
There are parts of this writing that are flatly untrue,
like Man claims Deborah Sampson Ginnett was at the Battle
of Yorktown, which was over long before she enlisted. There's

(23:35):
also an account of rescuing a white woman who was
held captive by indigenous people, and marrying her, but putting
off consummating the marriage until it could be properly solemnized
in the city. In the words of Man's book quote,
on their return to Philadelphia, they purchased her a suit
of clothes, but she, unable to express her gratitude, received

(23:56):
them on her knees, and was doubtless glad to relinquish
her sham marriage and to be sent to her uncle,
who she said lived in James City. This is almost
certainly just completely fabricated. Man commissioned a portrait of Ghannette
by folk artist Joseph Stone, which became the basis for
the engraving for the book's frontispiece. This portrait still exists

(24:17):
as in the collection of the Rhode Island Historical Society today.
It shows her in a feminine white dress, with long
brown hair that curls softly around her cheeks and her shoulders,
blue eyes, fair skin with rosy cheeks, and a pretty
prominent jaw. It's framed with some patriotic embellishments, like an
eagle bearing a shield that's decorated with stars and stripes.

(24:39):
Man was not the only writer trying to support Deborah
Sampson Gannett's pension efforts. Shortly after she filed her paperwork,
poet Philip for No published A Soldier should be made
of Sterner stuff on Debora Gannette, and that was published
in a publication called The time Piece. Although Ghannette pursued
this pension she was entitled to for months, her petition

(25:01):
for it wound up stalled in Congress. She tried applying
again a few years later, and in eighteen o two
she went on a speaking tour to raise money and
to try to gather support. She went all around New
England and New York and was built as the American Heroin.
She worked with herman Man again on the text of
the address that she would give on this tour. Some

(25:22):
historians have concluded that this was not a collaboration between
the two of them, but he just wrote it for her.
She would speak while wearing a dress, and then she
would go off stage and change into her soldier's uniform
and then come back and do military drills like presenting
her arms. We don't really know how much Ginnet stuck
to the prepared remarks that Man worked on, but we

(25:43):
do have a print version of it, It begins quote
not unlike the example of the patriot and philanthropists, though
perhaps perfectly so. In effect, do I awake from the
tranquil slumbers of retirement to active public scenes of life
like those which now surround me. That genius, which is
the prompter of curiosity, and that spirit, which is the

(26:04):
support of enterprise, early drove or rather allured me from
the corner of humble obscurity. Their cheering aspect has again
prevented a torpid rest. If you found that to be
a whole lot of words that essentially said said nothing
was very stilted. I have bad for Newton, bad news

(26:26):
for you. The whole thing is like this, uh. And
it's a lot more about patriotic ideals than about any
real specifics from her life for her time in the army,
which makes for maybe bad copy, but probably worked really
well to drum up crowds to support her. Gainett kept
a journal during her tour, and this journal reveals that

(26:49):
it was really kind of a difficult time. She was
traveling alone, and she was sick a lot. There are
lots of descriptions of toothaches and a pain in her
face and at one point what she described as dysentery,
and she also just really missed her children. Debra sam
Sincoinnett was finally awarded a pension as a disabled veteran

(27:10):
on March eleventh of eighteen o five after some prominent
people spoke up on her behalf, one of them being
Paul Revere. Her pension started at four dollars a month,
and then she applied for and was granted increases in
that amount in eighteen sixteen and eighteen nineteen. Sometimes she's
described as the first woman in American history to receive

(27:31):
a military pension or the first woman to be wounded
while fighting for the United States, but neither of these
is true. One earlier example is Margaret Cochrane Corbin, who
became a camp follower after her husband John joined the
Pennsylvania military. Margaret was helping her husband load his cannon
at the Battle of Fort Washington on November sixteenth, seventeen

(27:51):
seventy six, and when he was killed, she took his place.
She was then seriously wounded as well, and she became
a prisoner of war After the battle. The Continental Congress
awarded her a lifetime pension on July six seventeen seventy nine,
although at half the amount that men received. In her
later years, Deborah Sampson Gannett seems to have wanted her

(28:14):
family to know about and to remember her time as
a soldier, but she really stepped away from the public spotlight.
While her military service was described as exemplary, the idea
of cross dressing was still really scandalous, and any association
with the military could be seen as very suspicious for women.
There were thousands of women camp followers during the war,

(28:37):
and even though a lot of them were doing absolutely
necessary work like cooking and mending and caring for the sick,
they were viewed with a lot of derision and suspicion,
and this all fed into a lot of really salacious
rumors that she seems to have found genuinely upsetting. Deborah
Sampson Gannett died on April nine, eighty seven, at the

(28:58):
age of sixty six. At the time, Herman Mann was
working on a revised version of her memoir, one that
was written in first person, in which she had given
him permission to print only after her death. Man got
almost two hundred subscribers to fund this revised work, but
he also died before getting it published. His son took

(29:19):
up the project and made all kinds of revisions, but
then he died as well. Overall, these revisions made the
book more sensationalized and definitely not more accurate. Benjamin Gannett
petitioned the government for a survivor's pension, one that typically
would have been paid to a widow after the death
of her veteran husband. Congress authorized this on July seven,

(29:42):
thirty eight, with a committee noting that the Revolution had
quote furnished no other similar example of female heroism, fidelity,
and courage. Benjamin Gannett actually died about eighteen months before
Congress finalized this payment, so in the end it went
to his attorney and his heirs. John A. Venton printed
a new version of Herman Mann's biography of Deborah Sampson

(30:05):
Gannett in eighteen sixty six. It included lots of annotations
and corrections, as well as new information. There were also
lots of dime novels and other stories about her printed
in the nineteenth century. During World War Two, a liberty
ship was named the S. S. Debora Gannett. In nineteen
eighty three, Governor Michael Ducacus signed legislation naming Deborah Sampson

(30:28):
the official heroine of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, with May
twenty three being designated as Deborah Sampson Day. A life
sized statue of her was unveiled at the Sharon, Massachusetts
Public Library on Veterans Day nineteen eighty nine. In the
late twenty teens, legislation known as the Deborah Sampson Act
was introduced to in Congress a number of times, at

(30:51):
one point passing the House but getting stalled in the Senate.
This legislation was meant to improve women's access to care
and benefits through the Department of Veterans of Airs and
to improve the quality of that care. The bill's content
was eventually folded into the Johnny Isaacson and David p
row MD Veterans Healthcare and Benefits Improvement Act, of which

(31:12):
was signed into law on January. In this Act, title five,
Deborah Sampson is subtitled Improving Access for Women Veterans to
the Department of Veterans Affairs. Before we get to listener mail,
something came up during research on this that would normally
probably go into the Friday behind the scenes, but it
seems like enough listeners might have heard about it and

(31:35):
be wondering that I wanted to go ahead and talk
about it now. When I'm pulling together resources for episodes,
one of the places I look is Gail databases that
I have access to through the public library. Gail's first
book result when I searched for Deborah Sampson is from
the book Notable Black American Women. I was immediately confused,

(31:57):
since none of the material that I had gathered before
that point suggested that Debora Ghannette was black, and the
many references that I had seen who are ancestors being
aboard the Mayflower without mentioning any other ancestors kind of
implied that she was not. Sources from Gannette's lifetime don't
mention her race at all. It wasn't typical for white

(32:19):
writers to spell out another white person's race, but noting
the race of black people was routine in everything from
enlistment records to newspaper articles to personal journals. The idea
that Deborah Sampson was black seems to trace back to
William C. Nell's book Colored Patriots of the American Revolution
that was published in eighteen fifty five. This book is

(32:42):
noteworthy on its own. William Cooper Nell was a journalist
and abolitionist. This was one of the first books by
a black person to document the contributions of other black
people to the American Revolution. Now also wrote books about
black soldier's service in the War of eighteen twelve and
on christmathatics and the Boston Massacre. He is somebody who

(33:03):
could be an episode subject of the show One Day.
Colored Patriots of the American Revolution references Lemuel Burr, who
was black and indigenous. Lemuel's grandfather, Samuel Burr, was friends
with Jeremy Jonah and both served in the Revolutionary War.
Burr was in Gannett's regiment and Jonah was in another
regiment that was also stationed in the Hudson Valley. To

(33:27):
quote the book quote, Lemuel Burr, grandson of Seymour, a
resident of Boston, often speaks of their reminiscences of Deborah Gannette.
Now then prints the text of the General Court of
Massachusetts resolution awarding Debra Gannette thirty four pounds for services
in the Continental Army. Multiple historians have traced the idea

(33:49):
that Deborah Sampson Gannette was black to this passage. People
interpreted her inclusion in this book as meaning that she
was black as well, although it's really not entirely clear
if this was Nell's intent or not. From there, it
made its way into other people's work. The earliest examples
of this are primarily from black writers and speakers who

(34:09):
were doing the important and necessary work of documenting and
publicizing black people's participation in the Revolutionary War. For example,
Lewis Hayden, who was enslaved from birth but liberated himself
and became a prominent part of the underground railroad before
the Civil War, gave an address during the U S
Centennial in eighteen seventy six. He was speaking to the

(34:31):
Colored Lady's Centennial Club in Boston, and he used Gannett
as an example of black women's contributions to the war.
The idea that Deborah Sampson Gannett was black became more
widespread during the Civil Rights Movement, and it still comes
up today, primarily in sources that are focused specifically on
black people's achievements, like lists of facts for Black History

(34:53):
Month and that two book that we mentioned. To be
totally clear, it is not impossible that Deborah Samson Gannett
had African ancestry. Somewhere in her family tree. She had
one grandmother and one great grandfather whose parents aren't clearly documented,
And of course it's also possible that one of her

(35:13):
ancestors had an affair of some sort that wouldn't be
reflected in things like birth and marriage records. But beyond that,
Deborah Samson Gannett's documented ancestors traced back to people who
emigrated from Europe during the seventeenth century, nearly all of
them from England during the Great Period in Migration. It

(35:33):
would have been a scandal for any of them who
have had a child with somewhat of African descent, and
there just hasn't been anything found to suggest that that
kind of scandal happened. For folks who want more on
Deborah Samson Gannett, one of the more recent books about
her is titled Masquerade, The Life and Times of Deborah
Sampson Continental Soldier. That's by Alfred F. Young. There's also

(35:55):
a recent novel titled Revolutionary by Alex Myers. Myers is
a transgender man, so he brings a really unique perspective
to telling this story. Yeah, I um, this is the
second time in recent memory that there's been a novel
that I started reading and did not finish. In this case,
it's because there is a rape in the first chapter
and I noped hard out of it. At that point.

(36:17):
I was just not up for reading a book that
started out with a rape over the weekend. The no
not rest will way to spend your time. Um, which
is not say those aren't important stories, which I mean,
it's been extremely well reviewed. I just I was not

(36:37):
prepared and did not continue reading. There you go. Uh
do you have listener mail for us? I do have
listener mail. We have another round of incredibly belated thank you.
As we mentioned in a prior listener mail segment, our
office is changing locations. So Holly and I have each
received boxes of things from the two years that neither

(36:59):
of us went to the office that now have to
be dealt with because the office is moving and we
cannot just leave a bunch of stuff behind. That would
be very rude. Uh yeah, So I have three short
things from listeners and this is when I say very belated.
Some of these had postmarks on them that were from

(37:22):
late uh So, Chris said, Dear Holly and Tracy, I
hope this finds you well. I love the podcast and
have listened for years during the pandemic. I have had
your voices with me while making masks and wanted to
send us some on for thanks. Smiley faced Chris. Chris
sent some very nice cloth masks made with voyage manuscript fabric. Fabulous.

(37:48):
My household is still using cloth masks for things like
um dusting around the house and Uh. When my spouse
changes the cat litter, he usually puts a mask on
so that he does not inhale all of the cat
litter on the planet. We also got one from Danielle.
Danielle says, greetings from Tacoma, Washington. I just wanted to

(38:08):
thank you for doing an episode on the Tacoma Nera's Bridge.
It's nice to learn about my local history, and especially
thank you for not leaving poor Tubby out. I knew
of him before, but he never gets mentioned here and
it always makes me sad. I did not know about
the legend of the King Octopus and explains so much
about my favorite local art print included. I just thought

(38:30):
it was a cool octopus. Thanks again, Danielle. Danielle sent
this marvelous art print. I'm sorry if anyone can hear.
Uh lawnmower outside of my house that has started happening
just now. So Danielle sent this art print and it
is of an octopus like climbing up from the water
onto the Tacoma therera Is Bridge. It is great. Thank

(38:51):
you so much, Danielle. And then Grace wrote, dear Holly
and Tracy, I hope you both are well and being
gentle with yourselves during the stressful time. I just finished
working on this anthology, Votes for Women, which was in
no small part inspired by your awesome pod. Your pod
keeps me full of awesome ideas for all sorts of comics.
And so there was a book included that was called

(39:13):
Votes for Women, a comics anthology, and the said cheers
Grace with a picture. I'm assuming this is a self
portrait of Grace. So thank you so much, Grace, and
one last thank you. There was not a note included,
but thanks to Alexandra for sending UH the Subversive Ladies
coloring book. I got two gigantic boxes from the office.

(39:36):
It included approximately thirty unsolicited review copies of books sent
by publicists and then these pieces of listener mail. Thank
you again, UH to everybody who who sent things I
am so sorry that we did not say anything about
it for two entire years. In most cases, I'm sure

(39:58):
there's other stuff that will be unearthed in the whole
moving process. Um. I if anybody has sent us stuff
and it's like, I wonder why they never said anything,
we may not have gotten it. We may have gotten it,
and we haven't gone through the stuff yet. It's been
I haven't opened all my boxes. Yeah, you've got way
more boxes than I got because your boxes didn't have

(40:21):
to go all the way to Massachusetts. Correct. Um, So
thank you again everybody. Uh. As I said previously, As
we're in the middle of this moving process, I think
anything that we're would be sent to our office at
this moment might go into a strange parallel universe. We're
between addresses. Um, but if you would like to send

(40:42):
us an email, we're at History Podcast at iHeart radio
dot com and we're all over social media and missed
in History That's real. Find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram,
and you can subscribe to our show on the I
Heart Radio app wherever else you like to get your podcasts.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of

(41:03):
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.

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Holly Frey

Tracy Wilson

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Deborah Sampson Gannett, aka Private Robert Shurtlliff