Famous Letter For Deborah Sampson Gannett

Since my lovely wife, also known as the Missive Maven, has been gracious enough to mention my forthcoming novel on her blog (http://www.missivemaven.com/), I thought I would expand a bit on the connection between Deborah Sampson Gannet and letters.  In the novel, as my wife's blog notes, there is an epistolary element.  This is entirely a fictional imagination and -- as far as I know -- no historical record remains of letters Deborah wrote while in the service.

After her discharge, however, there is one famous letter written on her behalf.  

In 1804, (over 20 years after her service in the army ended) Deborah was living in Sharon, Massachusetts. Married and with three children, she and her husband struggled financially, frequently falling into debt.  Deborah had earned some money on a lecture tour and had, in 1792, received the sum of 34 pounds from the Massachusetts Legislature as compensation for her year and half of service in the army.  She felt she was owed more.

And so she reached out to Paul Revere, who ended up writing a letter on her behalf to Congressman William Eustis.  An image of the original letter, as well as a readable typescript below, can be found at The Paul Revere House Website, here.

As a writer, if not a missive expert, I appreciate this letter for its wonderful display of the spelling and grammar conventions (or lack thereof) at the time, but especially for its sense of rhetoric.  My favorite line is when Revere explains that he heard Deborah's story and fully expected to meet an uneducated, small-minded woman, "one of the meanest of her sex," but found instead a "small, effeminate, and converseable" woman.  This strikes me in particular because the core of this stereotype still holds true today, and Revere is delightfully honest in admitting his expectations when hearing that a woman had passed as a man.  

The end of the story is a happy one: Deborah got her pension of four dollars a month, thanks in large part to Revere's intercession.