July 8, 2022 • 16 mins
Tracy and Holly discuss Deborah Sampson’s disguise as Robert Shurtlliff and women who were camp followers in the Revolutionary War. They also discuss Major Richard Bibb waiting until his death to emancipate his enslaved workforce.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Fry. We talked about Deborah Sampson Gannette
this week, who we've gotten various listener requests to talk
about on the show. I meant to say in the
(00:24):
actual episode and forgot that I I followed, even though
I did not finished reading the novel Revolutionary, I did
actually follow Alex Meyer's direction on like being open to
talking about Robert Shirtlift by that name during the time
that Deborah Sampson was disguised as Robert Shirtliff. Most people, uh,
(00:48):
like historians and otherwise who have looked at the story
have pretty much concluded that this was a disguise and
that more than likely she would not identify as as
transgender today, especially because she went, uh she sort of
returned to life as a woman after her time in
the military was over. But I also thought it would
be interesting just kind of let her experience be more fluid,
(01:12):
which it also seems to have been in having been
undiscovered for a full eighteen months. Because that would have
taken a lot of work. We did not get into
that very much at all. Also didn't get into how
many women would have been around as camp followers through
even a lot of other women. They're doing things like
(01:33):
cooking for people, and just a lot of a lot
of people who wound up being camp followers or people who,
like the men in their lives, had joined and they
had no way to sustain themselves without somebody there, and
so they just wound up kind of following along, um,
which was one of the reasons that they were, uh
disparaged in some ways. A lot of them, like were
absolutely impoverished and had no no means to support themselves
(01:57):
at all and had just kind of wound up at
the camp. Yeah, there was that right up that we
were reading the quotes from that. I was just like,
wof um, it's so simultaneously praising and demeaning that It's like, yeah,
(02:18):
it makes my brain spin. It's like it's like a
weird no, No, she was a good one of these
horrible people that would be deviant. It's like there's speculation
about who who wrote this piece, like who either wrote
the piece or talked to a reporter, like who would
(02:38):
have done that, because it doesn't seem like she did it. Herself,
but it may have been like one of the officers
who found out what had happened, UM for reasons, maybe
hoping to set the stage of her being able to
claim some some pension or some assistance later on. Don't
(02:58):
really know. There's a kind of a big mystery there.
I was still in the pulling the resources phase when
I found the thing about her in Notable Black American Women,
and what I thought had happened at first, UM, A
lot of the books that are in that search will
have virtually an identical article on somebody or an event
(03:21):
spread across multiple publications with like very little editing. Is
like the same thing will be reused from one place
to another. And so I originally thought that it was
just an error because it was almost word for word
identical to another one that was in another article that
was about the revolution were generally and not about black
women specifically. UM. And then when I started looking into it,
(03:45):
I found just some heated discussions about it. I found
one an archive of what I am assuming was a
list serve back when I don't know if people are
still using list serves, but when I use list serves,
it was in the nineteen nineties and this was a
list Serve from the nineteen nineties and early two thousand's,
(04:06):
and there was some heated conversation among people about her race. Uh.
And one of the things that really struck me is
that there would be a lot of people who were like,
here's the book that it traces back to, and here
are other places that it was picked up, and there
was like citation of all of that, um. But then
the counterpoint sometimes would be like, no, she was black.
(04:29):
The idea that she was white came from the National
Geographic article, and they apologized, and I was like, what
National Geographic article and what apology? And I would start
trying to track it down and just kind of go
down a big rabbit hole. It was just a whole
huge I don't know. Apparently this is a thing that
will crop up over and over and over again, that
the there was somebody within this list serve, like a
(04:52):
historian who was part of it, who just had a
pre written thing that she would send back in every
time somebody asked the question that was like detailing what
we knew about her family history and what seemed to
be the source for that idea. So fascinating, Yeah, I
get it. I mean that's like I said in the
(05:14):
or like we both said in the episode, like there
was really important, necessary, valuable work being done to document
the contributions of black people to the revolution. I found
a thing somewhere that suggested that between five and ten
percent of the Continental Army were black. I wasn't able
to go look that up, but like, that was such
(05:34):
important work, and I I can totally see where people
got to that conclusion from the way that passage is written,
uh in in the book about the Yeah, I can
see how people made that conclusion and then how it
kind of spread from there. But if anybody has like
pinpointed this was her ancestor this is who we're talking about, Like,
(05:58):
I wasn't able to find that, and it definitely does
not seem like she or other people living at the
same time as her thought that she was in today's words,
black or a person of color. Yeah, that seems like
it would have come up. Yeah, but I guess there
(06:19):
will always be a little bit of we don't know
for sure. Yeah, the historian I have forgotten his name,
but the book that we reference at the end, that
is like a historical book about her that's been published
relatively recently. The historian that worked on that talked about
talking to descendants of hers and they're having a variety
(06:39):
of responses to this whole question, some of them being
like no, and I'm irritated that you asked all the
way to the other end of the spectrum, being sort
of like, I don't actually know, but if she was,
like I'd be interested now. Um. So I found that
very interesting too. I of course thought of Mulan throughout
the yeah, which undoubtedly, like the version that we have
(07:05):
in the US, like the Disney version, is certainly informed
by stories like Debrah's. We even mentioned how her right
up by herman Man is very similar to other ones
from prior to her, Like, I think those all get
amalgamated in a story like Mulan that's made for a
general audience as a fiction piece. Yeah. Yeah, And we've
(07:28):
had other episodes before that have been about women who
disguise themselves as men to serve in an army. At
some point like that's been I wouldn't call it a
recurring theme, but you know, maybe three ish times over
the past many years that you and I have been
on the show, that has come up, and there are
some similar beats, and a lot of those stories, um,
(07:49):
some of them, I have felt a lot more like
I felt like I knew more about that that particular
person's thoughts and feelings than with Deborah Sampson because so
much of what we know of her was filtered through
this largely fictionalized biography slash novel, and the things that
(08:11):
we have that are her own words are things like
her journal from the tour. She apparently kept a journal
while she was in the service, which would have been
an amazing resource to have, but it was lost when
the boat that she was traveling on was capsized, according
to the herman Man biography. But that's like a document.
But if that really was a real thing, I wish
(08:31):
we had it because we might know a lot more about,
like how she felt about this whole situation and how
she felt about herself when she was in the army.
A lot of those questions we don't really know. Tracy,
(08:51):
I should have told you before we recorded our episode
about the Bib family. I'm braced for a lot of
people to be real angry, Yeah, because is there a
lot of people who really love Major Bib Oh? Yeah,
And I clearly have some issues with him. Yeah, Um,
and I understand, like there are people and connections that
you have and you want to make the best of him.
And yes, he did eventually free people. But I get
(09:16):
really hung up on like, why why would you wait
until you were dead? Right? You didn't want to inconvenience yourself?
Is that what's going on here? Like, That's where I
get really hung up, And I'm like, that doesn't necessarily
make for a great person. Yeah, that point comes up
a lot in the especially among like historical figures who
(09:37):
are well known, and that becomes part of this. And
then when they died, they freed all of their enslaved workers,
and it's like they were dead by that point. Yeah,
that's a struggle. Um. There's also the fact that I
(09:59):
George is a of fascinating and troubling figure. He beyond
this we didn't get into this in the episode, but
went on to even greater positions of power. He was
part of President Tyler's cabinet. He you know, and when
you consider that this is a person who really really
like wrote what to me reads is a very coercive
(10:21):
letter suggesting really not actually obeying the spirit of his
father's will, and then went on to have so much power.
That also troubles me a lot. Um. His relationship with
Andrew Jackson is weird. He supported him, but then he
fought with them, but they had like a weird thing
going on. George is a trick in many ways. Um.
(10:43):
But but yes, the other thing about Major Bib providing
for his enslaved workforce to become free after his death
that I think maybe George had a point that he
didn't think everything through, is that there's no provision to
ensure anyone's safety. And it's not like he knew for
(11:07):
certain that the Civil war was coming and that this
would all get solved. But at the same time, he
did know he was living in a slave stay, and
he had to know unless he was just wilfully blind
to the realities of our country in the world at
that point, that that put every one of those people
at risk. Richard, What are you doing, ma'am? Yeah? Did
(11:34):
you ever listen to the podcast The nod some I have.
I'm very bad about keeping up with podcasts, is my
horrible confession as a podcaster. Yeah, and I I I
would listen to I would sort of pick and choose
episodes of that particular show. Um. The show was canceled
a while back, but I'm pretty sure you can still
get these episodes. They had episodes about the Hairston family
(11:59):
in North care Lina, which had some parallels to the
Bib family and having reunions among um, the people who
were descendants of enslaved people and the people who were
descendants of the White family and the like the overlap
because there were people who were descendants. It was the
(12:20):
same same situation of of this enslavers having um fathered
children with their enslaved workforce, which obviously would have been
rape um and like just talk talking about from people's
own perspectives what it was like to be part of
this family and to go to these reunions and things
(12:42):
like that. Um. It's been years since I listened to
those episodes, but I remember having the slowly dawning realization
that I knew some of the people they were talking
about because this plantation was in North Carolina, not that
far from where I grew up. And anyway, Uh, that
is another another place to find other perspective on that
(13:06):
aspect of this episode. Yeah, I UM, I know we
mentioned it at the end of the episode, but I
also just want to reiterate that I really really think
um Linney O'Neil's Peace The Bitter Harvest of Richard Bibb
is super important for people to read. She doesn't pull punches,
she's very frank. These are conversations that most white people
(13:26):
do not have the fortitude to have their hard. They
mostly want to be told like, no, you're good, and
it doesn't help anybody deal with the literally hundreds of
years of anger that people have been inheriting and kind
of sucking up, which is super unhelpful, and the generational trauma. Yes,
(13:48):
so that is a It's a very good read. I
really cannot recommend it highly enough. Um. I also just
I kept going back to John Bibbs life and thinking
about how much of like his decisions are the result
of being someone privileged enough to have a family who
(14:12):
had generational wealth built by enslaved people. Like there's that
whole there's a big ten year gap in his life
where he closes his law practice and he doesn't get
into politics for like almost eleven years, and it's like
because he could just hang out right, which sounds great,
I'm sure to all of us. Although I had hope
none of us would choose to do it as a
(14:32):
result of other people's enslaved labor. But like that is
that is what his life of wealth afforded him, and
any of those people who were working for his family
as enslaved workforce couldn't be like, you know, I just
I'm having bad health. I need to take ten years off.
They couldn't do it. That's where I like get frustrated
(14:53):
and want to cry in anger. Um. I also want
to mention we mentioned Joshua Fry, who was interesting. He's
the person that taught John bib as a kid and
a lot of prominent Kentuckians. He also has his own
complicated relationship with slavery. And I don't want to I
just didn't want to like be like no, he was good,
(15:13):
Like I don't want to let him off the hook.
We didn't get into it because it was like gonna
sidetrack the whole thing. But he's very interesting. He really
like forwarded education in many ways. He also had problematic
parts of his life. Um, I just want to make
sure we acknowledge that because I don't want to gloss
past any of it. Um. Yeah, this is not the
episode I meant to do. Yeah, I'm like Alfreda was
(15:38):
so fun. Let's talk about lettuce. Oh damn it. I
promise there will be another fun one. But we got
to have these conversations because they're super important. If this
is the end of your work week and you are
about to come upon some days off, I hope that
they are good to you and that you have some
(15:58):
relaxation and time to reflect on whatever you're working through.
This is a very strange time in all of our lives.
I know you probably have a lot on your mind.
I know I do, uh So I hope that you
get some space to work through any of that, however
works best for you. If you have to work, I'm sorry. Um,
if you have other responsibilities, I'm also sorry. I would
(16:19):
like for all of us to live lives of pleasure.
But I hope that whatever you have to do goes
as smoothly as possible and is as unstressful as possible.
And we will be right back here with you tomorrow
with a classic and then on Monday with brand new episodes.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
(16:40):
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.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Fry. We talked about Deborah Sampson Gannette
this week, who we've gotten various listener requests to talk
about on the show. I meant to say in the
(00:24):
actual episode and forgot that I I followed, even though
I did not finished reading the novel Revolutionary, I did
actually follow Alex Meyer's direction on like being open to
talking about Robert Shirtlift by that name during the time
that Deborah Sampson was disguised as Robert Shirtliff. Most people, uh,
(00:48):
like historians and otherwise who have looked at the story
have pretty much concluded that this was a disguise and
that more than likely she would not identify as as
transgender today, especially because she went, uh she sort of
returned to life as a woman after her time in
the military was over. But I also thought it would
be interesting just kind of let her experience be more fluid,
(01:12):
which it also seems to have been in having been
undiscovered for a full eighteen months. Because that would have
taken a lot of work. We did not get into
that very much at all. Also didn't get into how
many women would have been around as camp followers through
even a lot of other women. They're doing things like
(01:33):
cooking for people, and just a lot of a lot
of people who wound up being camp followers or people who,
like the men in their lives, had joined and they
had no way to sustain themselves without somebody there, and
so they just wound up kind of following along, um,
which was one of the reasons that they were, uh
disparaged in some ways. A lot of them, like were
absolutely impoverished and had no no means to support themselves
(01:57):
at all and had just kind of wound up at
the camp. Yeah, there was that right up that we
were reading the quotes from that. I was just like,
wof um, it's so simultaneously praising and demeaning that It's like, yeah,
(02:18):
it makes my brain spin. It's like it's like a
weird no, No, she was a good one of these
horrible people that would be deviant. It's like there's speculation
about who who wrote this piece, like who either wrote
the piece or talked to a reporter, like who would
(02:38):
have done that, because it doesn't seem like she did it. Herself,
but it may have been like one of the officers
who found out what had happened, UM for reasons, maybe
hoping to set the stage of her being able to
claim some some pension or some assistance later on. Don't
(02:58):
really know. There's a kind of a big mystery there.
I was still in the pulling the resources phase when
I found the thing about her in Notable Black American Women,
and what I thought had happened at first, UM, A
lot of the books that are in that search will
have virtually an identical article on somebody or an event
(03:21):
spread across multiple publications with like very little editing. Is
like the same thing will be reused from one place
to another. And so I originally thought that it was
just an error because it was almost word for word
identical to another one that was in another article that
was about the revolution were generally and not about black
women specifically. UM. And then when I started looking into it,
(03:45):
I found just some heated discussions about it. I found
one an archive of what I am assuming was a
list serve back when I don't know if people are
still using list serves, but when I use list serves,
it was in the nineteen nineties and this was a
list Serve from the nineteen nineties and early two thousand's,
(04:06):
and there was some heated conversation among people about her race. Uh.
And one of the things that really struck me is
that there would be a lot of people who were like,
here's the book that it traces back to, and here
are other places that it was picked up, and there
was like citation of all of that, um. But then
the counterpoint sometimes would be like, no, she was black.
(04:29):
The idea that she was white came from the National
Geographic article, and they apologized, and I was like, what
National Geographic article and what apology? And I would start
trying to track it down and just kind of go
down a big rabbit hole. It was just a whole
huge I don't know. Apparently this is a thing that
will crop up over and over and over again, that
the there was somebody within this list serve, like a
(04:52):
historian who was part of it, who just had a
pre written thing that she would send back in every
time somebody asked the question that was like detailing what
we knew about her family history and what seemed to
be the source for that idea. So fascinating, Yeah, I
get it. I mean that's like I said in the
(05:14):
or like we both said in the episode, like there
was really important, necessary, valuable work being done to document
the contributions of black people to the revolution. I found
a thing somewhere that suggested that between five and ten
percent of the Continental Army were black. I wasn't able
to go look that up, but like, that was such
(05:34):
important work, and I I can totally see where people
got to that conclusion from the way that passage is written,
uh in in the book about the Yeah, I can
see how people made that conclusion and then how it
kind of spread from there. But if anybody has like
pinpointed this was her ancestor this is who we're talking about, Like,
(05:58):
I wasn't able to find that, and it definitely does
not seem like she or other people living at the
same time as her thought that she was in today's words,
black or a person of color. Yeah, that seems like
it would have come up. Yeah, but I guess there
(06:19):
will always be a little bit of we don't know
for sure. Yeah, the historian I have forgotten his name,
but the book that we reference at the end, that
is like a historical book about her that's been published
relatively recently. The historian that worked on that talked about
talking to descendants of hers and they're having a variety
(06:39):
of responses to this whole question, some of them being
like no, and I'm irritated that you asked all the
way to the other end of the spectrum, being sort
of like, I don't actually know, but if she was,
like I'd be interested now. Um. So I found that
very interesting too. I of course thought of Mulan throughout
the yeah, which undoubtedly, like the version that we have
(07:05):
in the US, like the Disney version, is certainly informed
by stories like Debrah's. We even mentioned how her right
up by herman Man is very similar to other ones
from prior to her, Like, I think those all get
amalgamated in a story like Mulan that's made for a
general audience as a fiction piece. Yeah. Yeah, And we've
(07:28):
had other episodes before that have been about women who
disguise themselves as men to serve in an army. At
some point like that's been I wouldn't call it a
recurring theme, but you know, maybe three ish times over
the past many years that you and I have been
on the show, that has come up, and there are
some similar beats, and a lot of those stories, um,
(07:49):
some of them, I have felt a lot more like
I felt like I knew more about that that particular
person's thoughts and feelings than with Deborah Sampson because so
much of what we know of her was filtered through
this largely fictionalized biography slash novel, and the things that
(08:11):
we have that are her own words are things like
her journal from the tour. She apparently kept a journal
while she was in the service, which would have been
an amazing resource to have, but it was lost when
the boat that she was traveling on was capsized, according
to the herman Man biography. But that's like a document.
But if that really was a real thing, I wish
(08:31):
we had it because we might know a lot more about,
like how she felt about this whole situation and how
she felt about herself when she was in the army.
A lot of those questions we don't really know. Tracy,
(08:51):
I should have told you before we recorded our episode
about the Bib family. I'm braced for a lot of
people to be real angry, Yeah, because is there a
lot of people who really love Major Bib Oh? Yeah,
And I clearly have some issues with him. Yeah, Um,
and I understand, like there are people and connections that
you have and you want to make the best of him.
And yes, he did eventually free people. But I get
(09:16):
really hung up on like, why why would you wait
until you were dead? Right? You didn't want to inconvenience yourself?
Is that what's going on here? Like, That's where I
get really hung up, And I'm like, that doesn't necessarily
make for a great person. Yeah, that point comes up
a lot in the especially among like historical figures who
(09:37):
are well known, and that becomes part of this. And
then when they died, they freed all of their enslaved workers,
and it's like they were dead by that point. Yeah,
that's a struggle. Um. There's also the fact that I
(09:59):
George is a of fascinating and troubling figure. He beyond
this we didn't get into this in the episode, but
went on to even greater positions of power. He was
part of President Tyler's cabinet. He you know, and when
you consider that this is a person who really really
like wrote what to me reads is a very coercive
(10:21):
letter suggesting really not actually obeying the spirit of his
father's will, and then went on to have so much power.
That also troubles me a lot. Um. His relationship with
Andrew Jackson is weird. He supported him, but then he
fought with them, but they had like a weird thing
going on. George is a trick in many ways. Um.
(10:43):
But but yes, the other thing about Major Bib providing
for his enslaved workforce to become free after his death
that I think maybe George had a point that he
didn't think everything through, is that there's no provision to
ensure anyone's safety. And it's not like he knew for
(11:07):
certain that the Civil war was coming and that this
would all get solved. But at the same time, he
did know he was living in a slave stay, and
he had to know unless he was just wilfully blind
to the realities of our country in the world at
that point, that that put every one of those people
at risk. Richard, What are you doing, ma'am? Yeah? Did
(11:34):
you ever listen to the podcast The nod some I have.
I'm very bad about keeping up with podcasts, is my
horrible confession as a podcaster. Yeah, and I I I
would listen to I would sort of pick and choose
episodes of that particular show. Um. The show was canceled
a while back, but I'm pretty sure you can still
get these episodes. They had episodes about the Hairston family
(11:59):
in North care Lina, which had some parallels to the
Bib family and having reunions among um, the people who
were descendants of enslaved people and the people who were
descendants of the White family and the like the overlap
because there were people who were descendants. It was the
(12:20):
same same situation of of this enslavers having um fathered
children with their enslaved workforce, which obviously would have been
rape um and like just talk talking about from people's
own perspectives what it was like to be part of
this family and to go to these reunions and things
(12:42):
like that. Um. It's been years since I listened to
those episodes, but I remember having the slowly dawning realization
that I knew some of the people they were talking
about because this plantation was in North Carolina, not that
far from where I grew up. And anyway, Uh, that
is another another place to find other perspective on that
(13:06):
aspect of this episode. Yeah, I UM, I know we
mentioned it at the end of the episode, but I
also just want to reiterate that I really really think
um Linney O'Neil's Peace The Bitter Harvest of Richard Bibb
is super important for people to read. She doesn't pull punches,
she's very frank. These are conversations that most white people
(13:26):
do not have the fortitude to have their hard. They
mostly want to be told like, no, you're good, and
it doesn't help anybody deal with the literally hundreds of
years of anger that people have been inheriting and kind
of sucking up, which is super unhelpful, and the generational trauma. Yes,
(13:48):
so that is a It's a very good read. I
really cannot recommend it highly enough. Um. I also just
I kept going back to John Bibbs life and thinking
about how much of like his decisions are the result
of being someone privileged enough to have a family who
(14:12):
had generational wealth built by enslaved people. Like there's that
whole there's a big ten year gap in his life
where he closes his law practice and he doesn't get
into politics for like almost eleven years, and it's like
because he could just hang out right, which sounds great,
I'm sure to all of us. Although I had hope
none of us would choose to do it as a
(14:32):
result of other people's enslaved labor. But like that is
that is what his life of wealth afforded him, and
any of those people who were working for his family
as enslaved workforce couldn't be like, you know, I just
I'm having bad health. I need to take ten years off.
They couldn't do it. That's where I like get frustrated
(14:53):
and want to cry in anger. Um. I also want
to mention we mentioned Joshua Fry, who was interesting. He's
the person that taught John bib as a kid and
a lot of prominent Kentuckians. He also has his own
complicated relationship with slavery. And I don't want to I
just didn't want to like be like no, he was good,
(15:13):
Like I don't want to let him off the hook.
We didn't get into it because it was like gonna
sidetrack the whole thing. But he's very interesting. He really
like forwarded education in many ways. He also had problematic
parts of his life. Um, I just want to make
sure we acknowledge that because I don't want to gloss
past any of it. Um. Yeah, this is not the
episode I meant to do. Yeah, I'm like Alfreda was
(15:38):
so fun. Let's talk about lettuce. Oh damn it. I
promise there will be another fun one. But we got
to have these conversations because they're super important. If this
is the end of your work week and you are
about to come upon some days off, I hope that
they are good to you and that you have some
(15:58):
relaxation and time to reflect on whatever you're working through.
This is a very strange time in all of our lives.
I know you probably have a lot on your mind.
I know I do, uh So I hope that you
get some space to work through any of that, however
works best for you. If you have to work, I'm sorry. Um,
if you have other responsibilities, I'm also sorry. I would
(16:19):
like for all of us to live lives of pleasure.
But I hope that whatever you have to do goes
as smoothly as possible and is as unstressful as possible.
And we will be right back here with you tomorrow
with a classic and then on Monday with brand new episodes.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
(16:40):
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.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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