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Deborah Sampson Revolutionary War hero, lecturer, and patriot. Born into a Massachusetts family that were direct descendants from the Mayflower. Sampson spent a difficult childhood in servitude as the result of family misfortunes. She educated herself well enough to allow her to teach school after her indenture ended. In 1782, inspired by the Revolution, she dressed in men's clothes and joined the Massachusetts militia under an assumed name. She was found out and expelled from the militia. Undaunted, however, she enlisted as a man in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment and marched with her unit toward New York. She spent a year and a half in the Continental army, fighting at Tarrytown against New York Loyalists and in other engagements. Wounded in the thigh, she extracted the bullet herself rather than risk having her sex discovered. After becoming ill on a surveying expedition near the Ohio River, she returned east; ending her days as a Continental soldier. Sampson eventually married. In 1792 she petitioned Congress for a pension and was granted £34 in back pay. In 1802 she began giving lectures about her extraordinary time in the army, her friend Paul Revere took up her cause, and in 1805 Congress granted her a pension retroactive from 1803.

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