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Concept
Deborah Sampson
Summary
Deborah Sampson Gannett, also known as Deborah Samson or Deborah Sampson, was born on December 17, 1760 in Plympton, Massachusetts. She disguised herself as a man, and served in the Continental Army under the name Robert Shirtliff – sometimes spelled Shurtleff or Shirtleff – and fought in the American Revolutionary War. She fought in the war for 17 months before her sex was revealed when she required medical treatment after contracting a fever in Philadelphia in 1783. After her real identity was made known to her commander, she was honorably discharged at West Point. After her discharge, Sampson met and married Benjamin Gannett in 1785. In 1802, she became one of the first women to go on a lecture tour to speak about her wartime experiences. She died in Sharon, Massachusetts in 1827. She was proclaimed the Official Heroine of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on May 23, 1983, and in 1985 the prestigious United States Capitol Historical Society posthumously honored "Deborah Samson" with the Commemorative Medal.
Deborah Sampson was born on December 17, 1760, in Plympton, Massachusetts, at the ancestral home of her grandparents, a house that still stands today. Her father's name was Jonathan Sampson (or Samson) and her mother's name was Deborah Bradford. Her siblings were Jonathan (b. 1753), Elisha (b. 1755), Hannah (b. 1756), Ephraim (b. 1759), Nehemiah (b. 1764), and Sylvia (b. 1766). Sampson's mother was the great-granddaughter of William Bradford, the first Governor of Plymouth Colony. Sampson's ancestry also included Mayflower passengers on both sides of her family including William Bradford (mother) and Henry Samson (father)
Sampson's family was told that her father died in a shipwreck, but evidence indicates that he actually abandoned the family and migrated to Lincoln County, Maine. He had a common-law wife named Martha, with whom he had at least two children, and returned to Plympton in 1794 to attend to a property transaction.
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