Did Sybil Ludington’s Ride Really Happen?

Last month I talked with Ryan Chatelain of Spectrum News about the tale of Sybil Ludington.

His story, headlined “Sybil Ludington is called the ‘female Paul Revere.’ But did her ride really happen?” is a good primer on the historical debate.

On the one hand, Vincent Dacquino has succeeded in pushing back the documented mentions of Sybil Ludington’s ride, as shown in the most recent edition of his book Patriot Hero of the Hudson Valley:

Through his research, Dacquino uncovered that the earliest evidence of her ride actually came in 1854, when Charles Ludington — Henry’s grandson and Sybil’s nephew — argued in a letter to a group of Masons planning a statue for Gen. David Wooster, who was killed in the Battle of Ridgefield, that Henry and Sybil Ludington should also be included in their tribute.

On the other hand, as I state in the article, we still lack contemporaneous evidence about the Ludingtons’ effect on the Battle of Ridgefield or anything else to support the family lore. Knowing that Charles Ludington believed the story seventy years later isn’t proof that it actually happened.

On such lore, Chatelain quotes me on my theory of “grandmothers’ tales”:

“Women, sometimes men, involved in raising children would tell stories of the family’s involvement in historical events, presenting those stories simply as educational, as inspirational, as entertaining, not expecting them to be put into the public realm,” Bell said. “…But the children who are hearing those stories grow up — and because these are the earliest stories they’ve heard, because they have to do with their family, because they hear them maybe many times — they really stick with them. And so as they become older, they want these stories, which they believe to be gospel truth, out for everyone to hear.”

The legend of Sybil Ludington’s ride is one of many that fit that model. We know that in other ways the Ludington family lore exaggerates how central their ancestors were to events—just as most family traditions and many personal memoirs do. All the more reason to look for solid evidence.

As I said to Chatelain, the Sybil Ludington story may have some basis in fact. But we have to acknowledge how that account was massaged and enlarged over the years. In the early 1900s an author published a conjectural map of her ride, based on what he acknowledged was supposition. That’s became the basis of more maps, measurements, and highway markers, as well as the repeated claim that Sybil rode farther than Revere—without any additional evidence being offered.