Born on December 17, 1760, in Plympton, Massachusetts, Deborah Sampson was put into service at the age of ten by her widowed mother, and she lived thereafter in Middleborough. About 1779 she left service and became a school teacher. In 1782 she decided to join the fight for independence. After one attempt was discovered, she succeeded in disguising herself as a man╤she was tall, strong, and well coordinated╤and enlisted in May at Uxbridge, Massachusetts, as a private in Captain George Webb╒s company of the 4th Massachusetts Regiment under the name Robert Shurtleff.
For over a year she served capably and without detection. Soon after the regiment was ordered to West Point she received a saber wound in a skirmish near Tarrytown, New York, and a few weeks later she took a musket ball in a fight near East Chester. This second, fairly serious wound she dressed herself rather than risk exposure. She later served in western New York and then in Philadelphia. There she fell desperately ill and was hospitalized, whereupon her secret was revealed. In October 1783 she received her formal discharge and a sum of money from General Henry Knox. She later published an account of her war experience as The Female Review, 1797. In April 1785 she married Benjamin Gannett and settled in Sharon, Massachusetts. In 1792 she was granted a sum of money by the Massachusetts General Court for her services in the Revolution. In 1805 she was granted a veteran╒s disability pension by Congress, and from September 1818 she received a full pension; she stands unique among women as a genuine Revolutionary veteran and pensioner. She died in Sharon, Massachusetts, on April 29, 1827; in July 1838 her widower, Gannett, was granted a survivor╒s pension.
