Gallery Highlight 2 : Deborah Sampson

In 1782, Deborah Sampson (1760-1827) disguised herself as a man and enlisted in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment of the Continental Army as Robert Shurtleff. Sampson served for eighteen months before contracting yellow fever. Identity discovered, she received an honorable discharge in 1783. 

Sampson told her story to Herman Mann, who published The Female Review: or, Memoirs of an American Young Lady in 1797. Sampson later embarked on a lecture tour around the country, appearing on stage dressed in full military regalia. With support from Paul Revere, she became the first woman to receive a Federal military pension.  

Deborah Sampson’s only surviving garment is the dress worn for her marriage to Benjamin Gannett in 1785.  

“I will call it an error and presumption
because I swerved from the accustomed 
flowry path of female delicacy
to walk upon the heroic precipice of 
feminine perdition” 

– Deborah Sampson Gannett, 1802