User:Blakegilliam/Deborah Sampson

In 1802, she became one of the first women to go on a lecture tour to speak about her wartime experiences.

After Sampson’s father may have abandoned the family, her mother was unable to provide for her children, so she placed them in the households of friends and relatives, a common practice in 18th-century New England, and Sampson was placed in the home of a maternal relative.

Historians believe Sampson learned to read while living with the widowed Thatcher, who might have wanted Sampson to read Bible verses to her.

Upon Thatcher’s death, Sampson was sent to live with the Jeremiah Thomas family in Middleborough, where she worked as an indentured servant from 1770 to 1778.

In June of 1782, Sampson and two sergeants led about 30 infantrymen on an expedition that ended in a confrontation, often one on one, with Tories (American colonists loyal to the British Crown). She also led a raid on a Tory home which resulted in the capture of 15 men.

For Sampson’s first light infantry assignment, she was given the dangerous job of scouting out neutral territory to assess the buildup of men and equipment in Manhattan, New York, as then General George Washington was considering attacking.

During the battle of Yorktown, which lasted from September 28 to October 19, 1781, at Yorktown, Virginia, Sampson dug trenches, helped to storm a British redoubt (small fort), and endured cannon fire.

During her first battle, on July 3, 1782, outside Tarrytown, New York, she was shot twice in her thigh by a musket and sustained a cut on her forehead from a sword.

After falling unconscious due to fever, he removed her clothes to treat her and discovered the cloth she used to bind her breasts. Without revealing his discovery to army authorities, he took her to his house, where his wife, daughters, and a female nurse cared for her.

After her discharge and marriage to Gannett, Sampson lived the first few years of her civilian life as a typical farmer’s wife.