She Cut a Bullet Out of Her Own Leg to Hide a Secret
In 1782, 21-year-old Deborah Sampson, a former indentured servant from Massachusetts, bound her chest and enlisted in the Continental Army as “Robert Shurtleff.” Wounded near Tarrytown, New York, with a cut to her forehead and two musket balls in her thigh, she let doctors treat her head but slipped away and removed one ball herself with a penknife and a sewing needle; the other stayed in her leg for life. Her secret came out when she fell ill with a fever in Philadelphia and was treated by Dr. Barnabas Binney, who took her into his home. She was honorably discharged at West Point in 1783. Years later, poor and in poor health, she was helped by Paul Revere, who wrote to Congress in 1804 on her behalf, and she became one of the first women to receive a military pension in the United States.
Sources: “Deborah Sampson”, Wikipedia; National Women’s History Museum, “Deborah Sampson”; Paul Revere’s letter to William Eustis (1804), Massachusetts Historical Society; Alfred F. Young, “Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson” (2004).
#history #americanrevolution #truestory #womeninhistory #shorts
Leave a Reply