Sometimes when I close my eyes, I am marching again. Moments from those days stand out in glaring color, a red kerchief on a clothesline surrounded by wool. The memories wave at me gaily and haunt my dreams like I am there, the bare feet of the men around me leaving blood in the snow. Red and white and coats of blue. Marching endlessly back from war toward a future we will never see.
But I do not dream of Dorothy May Bradford anymore. My skirts don’t wrap around my legs and pull me under. I have learned to kick them free. To wear breeches when I must. And soon I will race again.
I can almost hear my brothers calling.
—Deborah
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I did not know the story of Deborah Sampson (also Samson) until 2021 when I came across an article about women of the American Revolution. It was a Fourth of July story, one from a women’s publication that I follow online. I was stunned. I once taught history! I was a schoolteacher at a school where America’s history and heritage was the foundation of the curriculum, and I didn’t know anything about her. I immediately went on a deep dive, as deep as I could go, considering the limited resources about her and her life. Then I wrote a proposal for my publisher, hoping they would be as interested as I was in her story. They were, and A Girl Called Samson was scheduled for publication.
That’s when the hard work began. Deborah’s tale was put to the pages back in the early 1800s by a man named Herman Mann, who is said to have interviewed Deborah at length. He didn’t do a very good job. It was an almost impossible read, and Deborah herself barely peeked out from the pages, but I caught a glimpse.
I dug into other original sources from the time period, one written by Dr. James Thatcher, a doctor assigned in the final years of his service to General Paterson’s brigade. In the book by Mann, Deborah is said to have known James Thatcher as a child, but no mention of her is found anywhere in the hundreds of pages of journal entries and detailed accounts Thatcher kept during the war. The Widow Thatcher, whom Deborah lived with from age eight to ten, seems to have been a relation of his, as I indicate in the book, though I do not know for certain what the relationship was.
Thatcher’s journal provided not just a wealth of information on Paterson’s brigade and the war in the highlands but specific accounts of Deborah’s regiment. Her commanding officers, men she served with, and assignments she would have been on were all there in his entries. Thatcher was well acquainted with General Paterson and references him many times. I don’t know if James Thatcher ever found out Robert Shurtliff’s true identity, though he certainly knew both the girl and the soldier. Dr. Thatcher addended his record and made additions to the text long after the war was over, but never mentioned her, though Deborah’s identity was exposed after her bout with yellow fever in Philadelphia. Dr. Thatcher references Dr. Binney as well.
Dr. Binney was an attending physician at the hospital where Deborah was taken, in her soldier’s uniform, unconscious and unknown. It was Dr. Binney who championed her and actually brought her into his home until she recovered. In Mann’s account, Deborah walked all the way back to West Point after she recovered and presented a letter to General Paterson from Dr. Binney, revealing the fact that she was a woman. At that juncture, Herman Mann claims, General Paterson gave her an honorable discharge and kept her secret, remaining a trusted confidant long after the war.
In Deborah’s words, John Paterson was her dear, old friend.
He was not old at all, but I don’t doubt that he was dear. When I read Herman Mann’s account, I could not help but think there was something there, something very special, even if it wasn’t romance. For Deborah Sampson to have become General Paterson’s aide-de-camp was miraculous, and he was very much her protector. More importantly, especially for the times in which he lived, he believed in and admired her for who she was and what she’d accomplished.
I had never heard of John Paterson either. His great-grandson, Thomas Egleston, compiled and published a record of his life in 1894 using the letters and accounts available in Revolutionary War archives—mainly letters to Congress and communications with other officers—along with stories that had been passed down in the family. No mention was made of Deborah Sampson in the great-grandson’s book.
Maybe John Paterson didn’t talk about her, though that’s almost impossible for me to believe. A female soldier who was his aide-de-camp? But no mention of her exists in 279 pages of Egleston’s small print, detailing Paterson’s eight years of dogged service in the Revolutionary War. Her absence felt conspicuous.