Deborah Sampson Performs in Boston
On this day in 1802, a performance of "The American Heroine" took place in a fashionable Boston theater. The audience watched spellbound as a middle-aged farmwife, dressed in the uniform of a Continental soldier, loaded and presented arms. The woman was Deborah Sampson Gannett. In 1782, the twenty-two year old had disguised herself as a man and enlisted in a Massachusetts infantry regiment. She served for 18 months before being wounded. Her masquerade was uncovered, and she was discharged. Her story became known only when she petitioned for back pay. To make ends meet while she sought a federal pension, she took the unprecedented step of performing "The American Heroine" on stages throughout Massachusetts and New York.
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