[4] She was proclaimed the Official Heroine of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on May 23, 1983, and in 1985 the United States Capitol Historical Society posthumously honored "Deborah Samson" with the Commemorative Medal.

[5] Deborah Sampson was born on December 17, 1760, in Plympton, Massachusetts, at the ancestral home of her grandparents, a house that still stands today.

[6]: 31  This method was apparently successful; when her time as an indentured servant was over at age 18, Sampson made a living by teaching school during the summer sessions in 1779 and 1780.

[6]: 41  She was also experienced with fashioning wooden tools and implements including weather vanes, spools for thread, and quills for weaving.

[6]: 43  Her biographer, Hermann Mann, who knew her personally for many years, implied that she was not thin, writing in 1797 that "her waist might displease a coquette.

[6]: 43 In early 1782, Sampson wore men's clothes and joined an Army unit in Middleborough, Massachusetts, under the name Timothy Thayer.

Inquiries by the company commander revealed that Sampson had been recognized by a local resident at the time she signed her enlistment papers.

[10] The Baptist church to which she belonged learned of her actions and withdrew its fellowship, meaning that its members refused to associate with her unless she apologized and asked forgiveness.

This unit, consisting of 50 to 60 men, was first quartered in Bellingham, Massachusetts, and later mustered at Worcester with the rest of the regiment commanded by Colonel William Shepard.

[13] Their job was to provide rapid flank coverage for advancing regiments, as well as rearguard and forward reconnaissance duties for units on the move.

[14] Because she joined an elite unit, Sampson's disguise was more likely to succeed, since no one was likely to look for a woman among soldiers who were specially chosen for their above average size and superior physical ability.

[6]: 98, 103 In June or July 1782, Sampson participated in a skirmish near Tarrytown, New York with about 30 infantrymen from her unit combating with local band of Tories.

[6]: 156  In other cases, women who pretended to be men to serve in the army were reprimanded, but Paterson gave her a discharge, a note with some words of advice, and enough money to travel home.

[6]: 156  She was honorably discharged at West Point, New York, by General Henry Knox[6]: 156  on October 25, 1783, after a year and a half of service.

[15] An official record of Deborah Sampson Gannet's service as "Robert Shirtliff" from May 20, 1782, to October 25, 1783, appears in the "Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War" Volume 14 p. 164.

After extolling the virtues of traditional gender roles for women, she left the stage, returned in her army uniform, then proceeded to perform a complicated and physically taxing military drill and ceremony routine.

She performed both to earn money and to justify her enlistment, but even with these speaking engagements, her husband and she were unable to pay all the family's expenses.

Revere also wrote letters to government officials on her behalf, requesting that she be awarded a pension for her military service and her wounds.

A military pension had never been requested for a woman, but 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."

On March 11, 1805, Congress approved the request and placed Sampson on the Massachusetts Invalid Pension Roll at the rate of four dollars a month.

On February 22, 1806, Sampson wrote once more to Revere requesting a loan of ten dollars: "My own indisposition and that of my sons causes me again to solicit your goodness in our favor though I, with Gratitude, confess it rouses every tender feeling and I blush at the thought of receiving ninety and nine good turns as it were – my circumstances require that I should ask the hundredth."