Clinton's Ditch Opened the Old Northwest and Made New York the Richest City

 

      Mule tow grain barges in the 1880s.

I’ve got an old mule and her name is Sal

Fifteen years on the Erie Canal

She’s a good old worker and a good old pal

Fifteen years on the Erie Canal

We’ve hauled some barges in our day

Filled with lumber, coal, and hay

And every inch of the way we know

From Albany to Buffalo

 

Chorus:

Low bridge, everybody down

Low bridge for we’re coming to a town

And you’ll always know your neighbor

And you’ll always know your pal

If you’ve ever navigated on the Erie Canal. 

—Thomas S. Allen, 1905.  Original lyrics written to commemorate the 15 years of construction on the Erie Canal.

                                        The original sheet music for Thomas Allen's song.  It is often mistaken for a 19th Century folk song.

The Erie Canal opened October 26, 1825.  Few innovations in American history had such immediate and far-reaching consequences as the public works project once derided as Clinton’s Folly.

A canal linking Lake Erie with the Hudson River at the New York capital of Albany was first proposed by Thomas Eddy, a businessman with interests in a failing canal digging company and sponsored in the New York State Assembly by Jonas Platt, leader of the Federalists in the Senate.  To gain bi-partisan support for the ambitious project, Platt proposed a commission carefully balanced between leading figures in both his party and the Democratic-Republicans. 

On March 13, 1810 the Erie Canal Commission was created with the assignment to do preliminary feasibility studies, explore possible routes, and come up with plans to finance what would be by far the biggest engineering project yet undertaken in North America.  Gouverneur Morris, a distinguished former Federalist Senator and one of the principal authors of the Constitution, was named as President.   The other commissioners were Federalists Eddy, Stephen Van Rensselaer, and William North plus Democratic Republicans DeWitt Clinton, Simeon DeWitt, and Peter Buell Porter.

                                    DeWitt Clinton. the man most responsible for guiding the Erie Canal to reality, in a portrait by George Catlin.

The driving force on the Commission quickly became Clinton with strong support, despite their different political connections of Van Rensselaer, the heir of the greatest of the Patroon dynasties of semi-feudal landowners in Up State.  The Commissioners quickly went to work and several of them explored the route as far as possible by water and on an arduous cross-country trek via unimproved roads and trails.  Clinton kept a detailed diary of his adventures on this trip. 

The following March the Commission issued a report that dismissed competing plans for a possible canal to Lake Ontario and proposed that a totally manmade channel be dug straight west from Albany to Lake Erie at Buffalo.  Morris dissented proposing instead a physically impossible scheme to deepen existing rivers and have Lake Erie “empty into them to fill them.”  Little wonder that his leadership on the Commission was by-passed.  Perhaps most importantly, the commission acknowledged that the project was too big to be financed by private capital and recommended public financing by the State.

In April 1811 the Legislature responded by authorizing the Commission to take all necessary steps to finance the entire project and granted $15,000 to begin its work.  It also added Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston to the body.  Fulton had launched a commercially viable steamboat service between New York City and Albany with Livingston, a member of a powerful political family, as his partner in 1807 which spurred interest in a western canal.  Both men were Democratic-Republicans, giving Clinton extra clout in addition to lending their enormous prestige to the project.  Fulton would actively work with Clinton on engineering aspects of the project until his death in 1815.

The War of 1812 ground progress to a halt.  Van Rensselaer was appointed General in command of the New York Militia.  The frontier with Canada around Buffalo became a major theater of operations in the war and was a jumping-off point for attempted invasions by both sides.  The lack of reliable transportation to bring artillery, arms, powder, and supplies to the front crippled American efforts and provided a national defense justification for a canal. 

Meanwhile, Clinton, then serving as Mayor of New York City and Lt. Governor, was reluctantly drafted by a dissident Democratic-Republican rump and backed by the Federalists to run for President against James Madison in 1812.  It was a close-fought election and Clinton took 47% of the popular vote while losing by a wide margin in the Electoral College.  The run strained his relations with loyal Democratic-Republicans, notably the powerful Livingstons.

At the conclusion of the war, Clinton revived interest in the project by holding a large public meeting in the New York City.  He promised residents that the project would bring about a boom:

The city will, in the course of time, become the granary of the world, the emporium of commerce, the seat of manufactures, the focus of great moneyed operations.  And before the revolution of a century, the whole island of Manhattan, covered with inhabitants and replenished with a dense population, will constitute one vast city.

In 1816 the Legislature reformed the Commission with explicit authorization to supervise acquisition of land and the actual construction of the project. Clinton was named the new President and Van Rensselaer, who now abandoned the dying Federalists to become a Clintonian Republican, were held over.  Joseph Ellicott, an agent for the powerful Holland Land Company which donated 10,000 acres of land to the project; Myron Holley, a state Assemblyman and political ally; and Samuel Young, who wrote the influential book A Treatise on Internal Navigation: A Comprehensive Study of Canals in Great Britain and Holland. 

In 1816 outgoing President James Madison vetoed a bill that would have contributed Federal funds to the construction.  Madison supported using Federal funds for internal improvements but doubted that barring an authorizing amendment to the Constitution that the government had the authority.  But it must also have been a satisfaction to slap back at Clinton.

1817 proved to be a big, break-out year for the canal. Clinton became the beneficiary when Daniel D. Tompkins was elected as James Monroe’s Vice President.  Despite the bitter opposition of the growing Tammany organization in New York City, Clinton was easily elected to serve out Tompkins’s term as Governor.  With his support, in April the Legislature created a Canal Fund which was authorized to spend $7 million for construction of a canal 363 miles long, 40 feet wide, and four feet deep. Commissioners of the Canal Fund was made up of the state Constitutional officers.

The route of the Canal across Upstate New York from the Hudson River to Lake Erie.

Construction began on July 4 at Rome.  The first 15 miles to Utica took two years to build due to the difficulty in felling trees through the virgin forest, excavating and removing earth by hand.  An innovative stump puller was used, but at best three-man crews with mules could only build a mile of canal and adjacent tow path in a year of arduous labor. 

Also holding up construction was the fact that in the entire United States there was not one trained civil engineer.  The surveyors who laid out the route, James Geddes and Benjamin Wright, were in over-all charge of construction and learned by doing.  They were aided by Canvass White, a 27-year-old amateur engineer who traveled to England at his own expense to study canal construction there and Nathan Roberts, a mathematics teacher.  Despite their inexperience they laid out an impressive record of achievement, carrying the “Canal up the Niagara escarpment at Lockport, maneuvered it onto a towering embankment to cross over Irondequoit Creek, spanned the Genesee River on an awesome aqueduct, and carved a route for it out of the solid rock between Little Falls and Schenectady...” according to Canal historian Peter L. Bernstein.

The eventual arrival of thousands of Scotch-Irish laborers greatly speeded construction.  These navies, although Ulster Presbyterians, were the first of a wave of hundreds of thousand Irish laborers who dug the canals and built the turnpikes and railroads of their new country.  Conditions were brutal.  Over a thousand men died of swamp fever at Montezuma Marsh, the outlet of Cayuga Lake west of Syracuse.  Work there ground to a halt until Winter when the marsh froze over.  But work in the frigid weather by men without adequate coats was almost as lethal.  Soon Catholic Irishmen were replacing the Ulstermen.  In 1825 Father John Raho wrote to his bishop that “so many die that there is hardly any time to give Extreme Unction to everybody. We run night and day to assist the sick.”

Despite the hardships, year after year the work pressed on.  The middle section from Utica to Salina (now Syracuse) was completed in 1820 and traffic on that section started up immediately. The eastern section, 250 miles from Brockport to Albany, opened in 1823 to great fanfare as did another 64-mile section from Watervliet on the Hudson to Lake Champlain. 

Construction a Lockport where the canal needed to raise boats up the Niagara Escarpment was the most significant engineering feat.  Powder was used to blast through the rock and cranes used to hoist blocks but most of the labor was still dangerous pick and shovel work.  The mostly Irish canal diggers suffered and died on the job.

Next, climbing the Niagara Escarpment up though an 80-foot wall of hard limestone was the great challenge.  Generally following the course of a “wild” stream pouring over the cliff, a series of five locks were carved out so that barges could be lifted to the level of Lake Erie.  This is the only section where wide-spread use of blasting powder occurred, predictably with fatal consequences for many workers. 

The step locks at Lockport pictured in the early 20th Century post card have been preserved and still are operated for tourist exhibitions.  

On the west end the village of Buffalo they dredged a channel of Buffalo Creek to make it navigable and built a port facility on Lake Erie.  That secured the village as the terminus of the canal over neighboring, and much less enterprising, Black Rock on the Niagara River.  In doing so Buffalo secured a future as an industrial powerhouse and the economic center of the region.

Despite the apparent success of his great project, Clinton was in political trouble.  Tammany politicians in New York City allied themselves with the Albany Regency, a masterfully assembled Up State political machine created by Martin Van Buren.  Together they became known as the Bucktails faction of the Democratic Republican Party and declared war on Clinton and his supporters.  Gaining control of a state Constitutional Convention in 1821, the Bucktails shortened the term of governor to two years and moved the term from a July 1 start to a January 1, thus shaving a year off Clinton’s term.  They also passed a 2 million dollar appropriation for the canal attached to a measure that stacked the Canal Board with Clinton’s political opponents.  The governor was forced to sign the measure or jeopardize funding of his pet project. In 1822 Clinton, despite huge personal popularity, was denied re-nomination by the Democratic-Republicans and he was out of office at the end of the year.  In 1824 the Legislature ousted him as President and a member of the Canal Commission.

The last act proved a step too far for his opponents.  With the Canal nearing completion, voter indignation over Clinton’s shabby treatment propelled him back into the Governor’s chair that fall.

Gov. Clinton Mingling the Waters of Lake Erie with New York Harbor.

It was with understandable glee that Governor Clinton got to preside over the ceremonies opening the canal in October 1825.  He sailed on the packet barge Seneca Chief along the Canal from Buffalo to Albany then transferred to a steam packet for the trip down the Hudson to New York City.  He poured two casks of Lake Erie water into the harbor in the City making a symbolic Marriage of the Waters to officially open the whole waterway system.

The economic and social effects of the Canal quickly surpassed the most optimistic predictions.  The vast resources of the Great Lakes Basin were immediately accessible in the east as they had never been before when the Allegany and Appalachian Mountains presented a substantial barrier to commerce.  Freight rates from Buffalo to New York went from $100 per ton by road to $10 per ton by Canal. In 1829 3,640 bushels of wheat were transported down the Canal.  By 1837 this increased to 500,000 bushels and four years later it reached one million. In nine short years Canal tolls more than recouped the entire cost of construction.  

Equally, if not more important, the Erie Canal became the great highway to the West for hundreds of thousands of settlers who were eager to claim land and begin to ship their crops east for good hard cash money.  Previously growth of the trans-Appalachian West was limited to the heartiest pioneers who had to stay close to the great river systems to ship their produce to market via the long trip down to New Orleans.  The younger sons of New England and New York farmers, craving land and with the resources to buy it flooded the Old Northwest transforming Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and even distant Minnesota from frontier wilderness to prosperous, populous states by 1850.

A Canal passenger packet circa 1850.

Not only did the mostly farming settlers find easy access to market, others began to ship the endless lumber of the Great North Woods, iron ore to feed the smelters and furnaces of an industrializing nation, and other resources.  Within 15 years New York City fulfilled Clinton’s dazzling prediction.  It leapfrogged its competitors, Boston, Baltimore, and New Orleans and was handling more freight than all those cities combined.  The Canal also spurred development in towns and cities along the route from Buffalo on down the Hudson.  Many cities developed industries that fed manufactured goods into the interior.  New York State communities along the path of the canal, the lateral canals built to feed it from the more remote interior of the state, and the Hudson River became boom towns.

The Canal was deepened and widened twice in the 19th Century to accommodate larger barges and greater traffic.  Between 1905 and 1918, engineers decided to abandon much of the original man-made channel and use new techniques to “canalize” the rivers that the canal had been constructed to avoid—the Mohawk, Oswego, Seneca, and Clyde plus Oneida Lake.  A uniform channel was dredged; dams were built to create long, navigable pools, and locks were built adjacent to the dams to allow the barges to pass from one pool to the next.  When it opened in 1918, the whole system was renamed the New York State Barge Canal.

Today most of the traffic on the New York State Barge Canal is private pleasure boats, canoes and kayaks, tour boats, and on some sections reproductions of mule drawn canal boats..  Here boat await entrance to the Canal at Buffalo during an annual Canal Fest.

The system remained an economic engine for New York State until the St. Lawrence Seaway was completed in 1959.  Traffic then dropped to a trickle.  In recent years the system has experienced a renaissance as recreational corridor.  Abandoned stretches of the original canal have been preserved in many places, including a 36-mile stretch in the Old Erie Canal State Historic Park from the town of DeWitt near Syracuse to Rome.

Seasonal Notes on Indian Summer and a Cultural Artifact

Note--It's still Indigenous Peoples History month.  Worth considering.

Thanks to El Niño, we are enjoying a spectacularly beautiful Autum--a long string of days with dazzling blue skys, a touch of fog in the morning, temperatures reaching 70 degrees mid-afternoon, and settling into the crisp 40s overnight as day by day the trees turn golden.  Quite naturally the subject of Indian Summer pops up in conversation.  Even the prognosticators on TV banter about it pleasantly with chortling anchor folk.

The pedant scold in me wants to yell, "You got it wrong.  It says right here in the Almanac that Indian Summer only comes after the first hard, killing frost, usually in November before the last leaves fall and snow flies in earnest."  But that would be mere quibbling.  Like anything else in you-can't-nail-i-down-English, the phrase means what users commonly understand no matter any contrary dusty pedigree.

The original illustration was printed in black and white to fill front page space on a slow news day.  Staff cartoonist John T. McCutcheon whipped up the drawing and accompanying text in a few hours.  The annual reproductions were full color and full page after 1932, sometimes even reproduced on "quality paper suitable for framing.

For me, and a lot of other geezers in these parts, Indian Summer always brings to mind John T. McCutcheon’s Injun Summer which first appeared in 1907 the Chicago Tribune and was then reproduced annually from 1912 until it was discontinued after 1992 for racial stereotyping and using terms that were regarded as racist and demeaning.

But it was also a much-beloved tradition, a wistful nostalgia piece.  In the early years of its long run there were many readers who, like McCutcheon, could recall Midwestern rural farmsteads with stacked, shocked corn in the late 19th Century.  By the end of its run its urban and suburban admirers were generationally removed from the inspiration.  They were nostalgic for a cultural artifact, something that may have been passed around with the funny papers and spread out on the living room floor.

Complaints started in the '70's when the American Indian Movement was making waves at Alcatraz, Wounded Knee, and even in Chicago where a bunch erected teepees and occupied a parking area by Wrigley Field.  Injun and other derogatory names like redskin or savage, became the Native Americn "N" word.  Debates about it filled Tribune Letters to the Editor columns every year, and became part of anual media chatter and commentary.  I seem to recall some picketing right outside of WGN's glassed in studio at Tribune Tower.

Much of the opposition was usual knee-jerk stick-in-the-mudness that is always against any change.  For others it was an emotional hill to die on like Chief Illiniwek or the Washington Redskins. And yes, there were those who let their naked racism shine through.  But it was a losing battle.  They were ground down by shifting sentiments and generational change.  In the end the Tribune decided not out of conscience but because continued embracement was not worth placating traditionalists who would quickly find something else to be grumpy about.

John T. McCucheon at his drawing desk in Tribune Tower.

But even at the end there was some thoughtful regret.  Reliable liberal progressive Roger Ebert wrote that it was "a victim of political correctness."  Some noted that the accompanying text written in dialect might have been critically acceptable it was penned by Mark Twain, or local colorists like Bret Hart, or by McCutcheon's fellow Hoosier, poet James Whitcomb Riley who's famous "Frost is on the pumpkin" verse is a cousin to his prose.  Some suggested that McCutcheon's words could a minor classic in that vein.  

Yep, sonny this is sure enough Injun summer. Don’t know what that is, I reckon, do you? Well, that’s when all the homesick Injuns come back to play; You know, a long time ago, long afore yer granddaddy was born even, there used to be heaps of Injuns around here—thousands—millions, I reckon, far as that’s concerned. Reg’lar sure ‘nough Injuns—none o’ yer cigar store Injuns, not much. They wuz all around here—right here where you’re standin’.

Don’t be skeered—hain’t none around here now, leastways no live ones. They been gone this many a year.

They all went away and died, so they ain’t no more left.

But every year, ‘long about now, they all come back, leastways their sperrits do. They’re here now. You can see ’em off across the fields. Look real hard. See that kind o’ hazy misty look out yonder? Well, them’s Injuns—Injun sperrits marchin’ along an’ dancin’ in the sunlight. That’s what makes that kind o’ haze that’s everywhere—it’s jest the sperrits of the Injuns all come back. They’re all around us now.

See off yonder; see them tepees? They kind o’ look like corn shocks from here, but them’s Injun tents, sure as you’re a foot high. See ’em now? Sure, I knowed you could. Smell that smoky sort o’ smell in the air? That’s the campfires a-burnin’ and their pipes a-goin’.

Lots o’ people say it’s just leaves burnin’, but it ain’t. It’s the campfires, an’ th’ Injuns are hoppin’ ’round ’em t’beat the old Harry.

You jest come out here tonight when the moon is hangin’ over the hill off yonder an’ the harvest fields is all swimmin’ in the moonlight, an’ you can see the Injuns and the tepees jest as plain as kin be. You can, eh? I knowed you would after a little while.

Jever notice how the leaves turn red ’bout this time o’ year? That’s jest another sign o’ redskins. That’s when an old Injun sperrit gits tired dancin’ an’ goes up an’ squats on a leaf t’rest. Why I kin hear ’em rustlin’ an’ whisper in’ an’ creepin’ ’round among the leaves all the time; an’ ever’ once’n a while a leaf gives way under some fat old Injun ghost and comes floatin’ down to the ground. See—here’s one now. See how red it is? That’s the war paint rubbed off’n an Injun ghost, sure’s you’re born.

Purty soon all the Injuns’ll go marchin’ away agin, back to the happy huntin’ ground, but next year you’ll see ’em troopin’ back—th’ sky jest hazy with ’em and their campfires smolderin’ away jest like they are now.

Critic Douglas E. Neeland wrote:  

To me, there’s an innocence of context about the McCutcheon material that rightly defies efforts to label it as a threat to racial harmony in 1991. More to the point is whether its annual appearance, other than offering a nostalgic glimpse of the newspaper’s past, serves any real purpose that is worth the space in the magazine.

But I have to confess if it were a nostalgic cartoon from the same era about Southern plantation life that depicted slaves eating watermelons and described them as “happy darkies,” I would not find it benign.

Neeland's reluctant conclusion was correct.  

Two days ago, I posted a short poem in the Blog, Accidental Idaho, at Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout: From the Murfin Verse Archives--Accidental Idaho written in 2011, which unconsciously may have drawn from the same sort of inspiration as McCutcheon.  I used no pejoratives, yet I wonder if I too may have objectified Native people.  Should I stone myself?

Deborah/Robert Shurtlieff Sampson Was the Continental Soldier in Drag

 

The portrait of Deborah Sampson from the front piece of a 1797 biography is the only reliable image of her appearance.

After a year and a half of active service in a regular regiment of the Continental Line, Corporal Robert Shurtlieff Sampson was discovered to be a woman—Deborah Sampson, and was honorably discharged on October 25, 1783 by a somewhat astonished and amused General Henry Knox who even kindly gave her money for her long trip home.

There have been a handful of documented cases of women posing as men to serve in the armed forces in American history.  The Civil War saw such enlistments in both the Union and Confederate armies, the most famous being Sarah Emma Edmonds who served with the Union disguised as Frank Flint Thompson.  She served first as a male nurse and later as a spy until she contracted malaria and abandoned the Army rather than be discovered in a military hospital.  Edmonds was eventually granted a pension for her service and was the only woman admitted as a full member of the Grand Army of the Republic. 

But long before Edmonds was Deborah Sampson who joined the Continental Army under the name of her dead brother, Robert Shurtlieff Sampson and served for a year and a half, much of the time as an infantryman of the Massachusetts Line.

Sampson was born the oldest of seven children on December 17, 1760 in Plympton, Massachusetts into an old colonial family.  Through her mother she was a direct descendent of William Bradford, first Governor of Plymouth Colony.  Despite the distinguished lineage, the family fell on hard times when Deborah was about seven years old when her father was lost at sea.  Her struggling mother soon had to break up the family and send the children to foster with others.  Deborah was shuttled between households until she turned 10 years old and was bound and indentured to Deacon Benjamin Thomas, a farmer and Baptist elder in Middleborough who had a large family.  There she toiled as a domestic servant and farm laborer until her bondage ended on her 18th Birthday.  It was a hard life, but she managed to teach herself to read and write by caging free moments to peruse Deacon Thomas’s small religious library.

There was something else she found on Thomas’s shelves—a militia musters manual with instructions for the complicated use of military muskets, an already antiquated manual of arms, and descriptions of field marching orders.  The Revolution was on, although the main theaters of the war had moved on from New England.  Amid the drudgery of her life, Deborah longed for the excitement and adventure of a life as a soldier.

After leaving bondage Sampson began teaching school in the summer and weaving in the winter for a meager income.  Her mother, with whom she had never lost contact, schemed to rescue both of them from poverty by trying to match Deborah up with a well-to-do landowner.  She began to worry that he mother might succeed before she could live the life she wanted.

In 1780 Sampson first disguised herself as a man and enlisted Massachusetts Militia Forces in Middleborough under the name Timothy Thayer.  She was soon recognized in the town where she had grown up, was discovered, and forced to return her enlistment bounty.   She became an object of scandal and ridicule in town and was expelled from her Baptist congregation for “un-Christian like action.”

Undeterred, Sampson tried again, walking to Uxbridge, a town in Worcester County, on the Connecticut River far enough away from home so that she would not be recognized.  At 5 foot, 7 inches tall, Sampson was not only taller than most women of her time, she was not much shorter than the average height of men.  She was strong and robust from a life of labor.  With her hair cut shorter and tied at the neck in a queue and her breast bound, she had no difficulty in convincing Muster Master Noah Taft that she was Robert Shurtlieff Sampson, her dead brother.  It probably also helped, if the rude portraits of her made after the war are any indication, that she was not a delicate beauty, but had a gaunt face and a long, sharp, pointed nose.  Sampson’s signature on the muster role is preserved in Massachusetts.

This contemporary illustration accurately depicts the blue, buff, and red uniform with plumed cap of the 4th Massachusetts.  The regiment also wore a tri-corn hat when the fancy caps were not available.

Sampson was assigned to the Light Infantry Company of the 4th Massachusetts Regiment under the command of Captain George Webb.  The sixty-man company was the elite assault unit of the Continental Army regiment of the line.  In other words, Sampson was a Regular.  Her unit was first posted to Bellingham and then to Worcester where the regiment’s companies consolidated under the command of Col. William Shepard. 

The regiment was posted to the area around Westchester County, New York, north of New York City where it screened George Washington’s forces along the Hudson from probing attacks by the Red Coats based in the city.  She engaged in several sharp skirmishes with English patrols and acquitted herself well under fire.  On July 3, 1782, in a particularly sharp engagement near Tarrytown, Sampson was wounded three times, suffered a saber gash to the head and two musket balls to the thigh.

Afraid that medical assistance might expose her secret, Sampson tried to refuse treatment begging to be allowed to die on the battlefield.  He comrades would have none of it.  They commandeered a horse and carried her six miles to a crude Army hospital.  A surgeon treated her head wound but Sampson managed to slip away before her breeches could be cut away to remove the balls.  In hiding she tried to do the job herself, probing with a pen knife.  She got one ball out, but the other was too deep and she carried it the rest of her life.  The stubborn ball also caused her a permanent disability—she walked with a limp ever after.  But almost miraculously the wounds did not become infected and Sampson survived.

When she rejoined her unit she was promoted to corporal.  She returned to field duty and saw a dust up or two more, but the main action of the War had shifted to Virginia.  With little to do in the field and her leg obviously bothering her, she was honored as wounded veteran soldier to be the personal waiter to General John Paterson.

The war was virtually over in June of 1783.  The Treaty of Paris was under negotiations and everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the remaining English armies sailed away.  But at home, deprived of an active enemy, there was unrest.  Unpaid officers and troops mutinied and threatened Congress in Philadelphia.  Washington ordered the 4th Massachusetts to sail for the capital and protect Congress.

That summer Sampson fell desperately ill with what was diagnosed as malignant fever.  She was treated by Dr. Barnabas Binney who discovered her bound breasts while he tried to treat her.  The sympathetic doctor decided not to reveal her secret.  Instead, he took Sampson into his own household where she was slowly nursed by to health by his wife and daughter.

As soon as word arrived that the Treaty had finally been signed, word came that her regiment, like most Continental Regiments would be mustered out in November.  By late October Sampson was better.  Dr. Binney decided to send to her back to the Army carrying a personal sealed letter to General Paterson.  Sampson was sure that it revealed her secret and that she would be cashiered, stripped of pay and rank, and possibly even imprisoned.   But she dutifully delivered the letter, never opening it or never sure of its contents.

Corporal Sampson delivers the sealed letter from her doctor to General John Patterson, who she had served as a personal waiter while disabled, which revealed her sex and true identity.

Whatever the Dr. said in the letter, it impressed General Paterson who forwarded it to General Henry Knox at West Point who summoned her to report.  Paterson was surprised to find that the General was sympathetic.  After more than 17 months of active service, Knox granted Sampson an honorable discharge, gave her some fatherly advice, and personally gave her money for her return home.

Once again in women’s attire and traveling under her own name, but carrying her precious Continental Army uniform, Sampson boarded a costal sloop in New York City and sailed to Providence, Rhode Island.  From there she walked home.

In 1785 Sampson married Benjamin Gannett and settled on his farm in Sharon, Norfolk County.  It was the kind of New England stone field farm that yielded a slender living, and the growing family was always on the verge of poverty.  She gave birth to three children, Earl in 1786, Mary in 1788, Patience in 1790, and adopted orphan Susanna Baker.  As years went on Sampson began pursuing various veteran benefits to supplement her family income.

Her story became well known locally and she became something of a minor celebrity.

In January 1792, Sampson petitioned the Massachusetts State Legislature for back pay owed her which withheld because she was a woman. The petition passed the Senate and was signed by Governor John Hancock. The General Court of Massachusetts verified her service and cited her for exhibiting “an extraordinary instance of female heroism by discharging the duties of a faithful gallant soldier, and at the same time preserving the virtue and chastity of her sex, unsuspected and unblemished.” She was awarded the tidy sum of £34.

In 1802 at the age of 42 Sampson began to supplement her family income by lecturing about her Revolutionary War experiences.  In the first half of the lecture dresses as a respectable farm wife she would tell the story of her experience.  She would return in her old Revolutionary uniform—blue and buff with red facing and the distinctive feathered cap worn by her regiment—and execute the complex manual of arms with her heavy musket.  Her lectures naturally took her to Boston where she became friendly with fellow patriot Paul Revere who became a patron of sorts often lending her small sums of money.

In 1804 Revere wrote to Massachusetts Representative William Eustis requesting that Congress grant her a military pension, the first such petition ever made on behalf of a woman.  Revere’s prestige no doubt helped the case.  Revere wrote,

I have been induced to enquire her situation, and character, since she quit the male habit, and soldiers uniform; for the more decent apparel of her own gender...humanity and justice obliges me to say, that every person with whom I have conversed about her, and it is not a few, speak of her as a woman with handsome talents, good morals, a dutiful wife, and an affectionate parent.

The next year Congress granted a pension of $4 a month and instructed that she be put on the Massachusetts Invalid Pension Roll.

One of several accounts of Sampson's service published for young adults and children.

Her health declining and still in desperate circumstance in 1808 Sampson petitioned Congress to make her Invalid pension retroactive to the date of her discharge in 1783 since she had suffered from her leg wound the entire time.  The petition was denied and resubmitted to every new Congress until finally in 1816 approved payment equal to $76 for each year.  With that money she was able to pay all of her debts, including those to her aging benefactor Revere and live out her days in relative comfort.

Sampson died on April 29, 1827, at the age of 66 of yellow fever and was buried in Rock Ridge Cemetery in Sharon.  Her husband survived her by ten years.

The Deborah Sampson statue in Sharon, Massachusetts, her post-war home.

Deborah Sampson has become a minor folk hero and has been the subject of both an adult biography and books aimed at inspiring young women.  Her farm home in Sharon is a historic site, and her life-size statue stands outside the Sharon Public Library.

Walking the Walk and Compassion for Campers Update for October 23 2026

Look for new opportunities for action, education, community, and solidarity in and around McHenry County here every week.  

Walking the Walk

Congratulations to all those who were able to participate in any of the activities of the No Kings: Vote Early events held in or around McHenry County and to all who were inspired to take heed and secure their ballots.  The thousands in these parts we part of a record nine million plus who hit the streets in almost every county in the  U.S.

Urgent notice--Vote by Mail alert.  Changes in regulations and uncertainty about possible Postal Service actions means to use caution before dropping your Illinois ballot into a USPS collection box.  If possible, place your ballot in secure drop boxes in McHenry County at 12 sites to cast their ballots early, regardless of where in the county you live. early voting officially opened Sept. 24 at the McHenry County Election Center, 410 S. Eastwood Drive, Woodstock. You can find a complete list of locations and hours of operation on the McHenry County Clerk’s Office website by visiting www.mchenrycountyclerkil.gov then clicking on “Elections” and “Voter Information.” Early voting will be available until 7 p.m. the night before the election at seven of the locations.

Compassion for Campers

Thanks to our partners at harm reduction program Live4Lali, Compassion for Campers is able to resume serving the unhoused and housing insecure in McHenry County with distributions on the First and Third Fridays of the month.  Our next distribution will be this Friday, November 6 from 10 am to Noon at their offices at 665 W. Jackson Unit C2 in Woodstock and then on November 20. We will be able to use the space until at least the end of 2026 or until a search to find a new location for the whole McHenry County Resource Center program to find a new location.  

One way to support our mission is to participate in the Tree of Life UU Congregation (TOLUUC) Service Auction: Serving Looks & Raising Funds on Saturday, November 14 at 5 pm at our shared space at Ridgefield/Crystal Lake Presbyterian Church (RCLPC), 8505 Church Street in Ridgefield and online starting Sunday, November 1.  The Live and Silent Auction supports the staff and mission of TOLUUC and four great community partners including C4C, Crystal Lake Pride, Family Health Partnership Clinic, and Veterans Path to Hope.  "November 14 will be huge fun! Ron Relic will return as our very entertaining and experienced auctioneer, we will have fun, family-friendly drag performers bringing lots of energy to the evening, hors d'oeuvres will be circulating the room while you check out the silent auction baskets and other offerings."  Admission donation is $20.  Reserve a spot at https://2026-Tree-of-Life-UU-Service-Auction.auctria.events or pay at the door.

Financial support remains critical to fulfilling our mission. The best thing you can do is offer your critically needed financial support. Money donations are always welcome at     https://tinyurl.com/3bz96axe.   Look for updates here.  Email compassionforcampers@treeoflifeuu.org .