Sampson received an honorable discharge and went back to Massachusetts. Sampson’s time as a Revolutionary fighter came to a halt a few months before the end of the war, after she fell ill in Philadelphia and a doctor realized that Shurtleff was, in fact, a woman. Sampson is said to have extracted one piece of shrapnel from her leg by herself another remained in her body for the rest of her life.
She was reportedly hit by musket fire in the summer of 1782, but refused medical treatment for a leg injury due to fears that her true identity would be discovered. According to the Brooklyn Museum, Sampson “participated in several skirmishes” and sustained multiple injuries. She enlisted as Shurtleff and spent at least 17 months as a combat soldier. Patriotism may have been a driving factor, but the promise of money may have also played a role according to Cowan, towns that were unable to fill their recruitment quotas during the waning years of the war offered bounties to entice volunteer soldiers.Īt any rate, Sampson appears to have been so determined to join the cause that she made a second attempt-and this time, she was successful. Sampson’s motivations for attempting to take up arms remain unclear.
But being found out returnd the hire and paid the Damages.” “Their hapend a uncommon affair at this time,” he wrote, per Cowan, “for Deborah Samson of this town dress her self in men’s cloths and hired her self to Israel Wood to go into the three years Servis. In his diary, Weston describes how Sampson’s cross-dressing scandalized their town: In the early 1780s, Sampson first tried to disguise herself in men’s clothing and enlist in the military. She subsequently worked as a teacher during the summer, though she had little in the way of formal education, and as a weaver in winter. According to the National Women’s History Museum, her parents were impoverished, their circumstances so dire that Sampson was bound as an indentured servant until the age of 18. Scholars generally agree that Sampson was born in Plympton, Massachusetts, circa 1760. “So, finding a little piece of it is even more important than finding another piece of George Washington’s history.” “Deb Sampson, her story is mostly lost to history,’’ Mead tells Cowan. Wood, one of the owners of the business, brought the diary with him to an antiques show in New Hampshire, where it was recently scooped up by Philip Mead, chief historian and director of curatorial affairs at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. The diary was penned by Abner Weston, a corporal in the Massachusetts militia, and was part of a cache of documents purchased by the Maine-based DeWolfe & Wood Booksellers last year. So, as Alison Leigh Cowan reports for the New York Times, historians were excited to stumble upon a diary, belonging to Sampson’s neighbor, that promises to shed new insight into her wartime escapades. While her participation in the conflict is “ undisputed,” many contradictory stories have been told about Sampson over the years, and the details of her biography remain hazy.
In 1782, as the Revolutionary War was barreling toward its conclusion, a woman named Deborah Sampson disguised herself as a man, enlisted in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment under the name "Robert Shurtleff" and fought in military operations.
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