BIO: Despite serving faithfully in the Continental Army for several years, a young soldier named Robert Shurtliff did not receive the pension guaranteed to all veterans. The situation, however, was unique: Robert Shurtliff was, in fact, Deborah Sampson, believed to be the first American woman to fight as a soldier for her country.

Dressed in men's clothing, Sampson enlisted in the army and was assigned to the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment. In June of 1782, during a battle in New York, Sampson was shot in the leg but returned to her regiment after a brief recuperation. Soon after, her regiment was ordered to march several hundred miles through driving blizzards, and Sampson was eventually hospitalized for pneumonia. Again, she recovered and went back to fight. After the war Sampson was honorably discharged and eventually married Benjamin Gannett, had children, and worked on a farm. But as the years went on working became difficult, owing in part to her past injury and hospitalizations, and the family slipped into poverty.

Paul Revere, a neighbor who sympathized with Gannett's plight, assisted her in her efforts to receive a pension. In 1804 he wrote a letter to William Eustis, a Massachusetts representative in Congress. Through Revere's intervention, a short time later Congress added to the Massachusetts Pension Rolls the name "Deborah Sampson Gannett, (of Sharon), who served as a soldier in the Army of the United States during the late Revolutionary War, and who was seriously wounded therein."

-- Excerpt, "Letters of a Nation," A. Carroll