Deborah Champion, Cloaked Crusader

Last week’s postings showed how descendants of Henry Champion, particularly women who had joined the Daughters of the American Revolution, promulgated the dubious Deborah Champion letter in the early 1900s. They told the story at meetings, sent copies to other chapters, and probably shared a copy to the authors of The Pioneer Mothers of America.

This week’s postings have shown how the text of that letter changed over time, how its details don’t conform to facts about the siege of Boston, how it reads like historical fiction. Most of the Champion relatives could have been sincerely duped about the letter’s authenticity. But someone was working to maintain the fraud.

Interestingly, those women didn’t need the evidence of the Deborah Champion letter to join the D.A.R. Their common ancestor Henry Champion is well documented as a commissary general for the Continental Army, qualifying all his descendants for membership. His son, also named Henry, was a high officer in the army, mentioned in George Washington’s correspondence. The Champion men already offered an authentic Revolutionary heritage.

What’s more, the Champion family remained prominent in Connecticut. The commissary general’s house is preserved as the headquarters of the Colchester Historical Society. The Connecticut Historical Society holds a collection of his and his son’s papers. (More are at the Litchfield Historical Society.) Deborah Champion’s husband, Samuel Gilbert, was a respected state legislator and jurist, and their son Peyton R. Gilbert’s papers are at Yale.

But this letter provided a Revolutionary heritage for the Champion women—not just Deborah, who supposedly performed a ride to rival Paul Revere’s, but also the women who preserved and shared her story over a century later. It might have been particularly meaningful for women in branches of the family who had moved away from Connecticut. The most likely candidate for writing the letter was Mary Rebecca Adams Squire of Ohio and Pennsylvania, who first received praise for sharing the “charming tale” in 1902 and supplied a version to another branch of the family in the following decade.

The letter portrays Deborah as brave, patriotic, dedicated to her father and General Washington, and active. She’s not a “stay at home” focused wholly on feminine handcrafts. She steps into the traditionally male role as rider. In that respect, the Deborah Champion story is similar to the stories of Emily Geiger (first published in 1832, no contemporaneous documentation), Abigail Smith (first published in 1864, refuted by family documents), and Sybil Ludington (first published in 1880, no contemporaneous documentation).

The story of her ride to Boston made Deborah Champion a heroine that later generations of Americans could relate to: a seventeen-year-old loyal daughter undertaking a dangerous mission for Gen. Washington. No matter that she was actually twenty-two years old and married by the (earliest) date of the letter. No matter that the letter is full of improbable details and language.

In 1980, two of Deborah Champion’s descendants donated a fur-lined red cloak to the Connecticut Historical Society. In its newsletter the society reported the “family tradition” that Deborah “wore it when she rode through British lines in 1775, carrying dispatches to General Washington.” Yet even with all its detailed descriptions of clothing, the letter doesn’t describe that fur-lined red cloak.

I asked Lynne Bassett, an expert on historic textiles, about that garment. She replied that it appears “entirely authentic. It’s made of red wool broadcloth with shag trimming the edges. All of the construction details are right.” It’s a much more impressive artifact than we have from the vast majority of eighteenth-century American women. But without the dramatic story provided by the dubious letter, it would still be an empty cloak.

TOMORROW: The Deborah Champion revival.

Going Back to Sybil Ludington

Back in June 2006, less than a month after launching Boston 1775, I wrote my first analysis of the story of Sybil Ludington. I posted a complete quote from Willis Fletcher Johnson’s Colonel Henry Ludington: A Memoir (1907) that November.

Back then, I read that book the old-fashioned way: by tracking down a rare printed copy in a library. Today I don’t even have to stand up to read it. (This does not bode well for my cardiovascular fitness.)

I thought Johnson’s book was the earliest source of the Sybil Ludington tale. He didn’t mention any previous source, and neither did any of the twentieth-century books I’d found about her.

This week, the pseudonymous Samuel Wilson kindly alerted me to an earlier appearance of the story: in the second volume of Martha J. Lamb’s History of the City of New York: Its Origin, Rise, and Progress, published in 1880. Google Books digitized that volume in 2010.

While describing the British army raid on a Continental storage depot in Danbury, Connecticut, Lamb wrote on pages 159-60:

The country was aroused far and near. [Gen. David] Wooster and [Gen. Benedict] Arnold were both in New Haven on furloughs, but were quickly speeding by a forced march to the rescue, and [Gen. Gold Selleck] Silliman was on the wing. Late in the evening a flying messenger for aid reached Colonel [Henry] Ludington in Carmel, New York, whose men were at their homes scattered over the distance of many miles; no one being at hand to call them, his daughter Sibyl Ludington, a spirited young girl of sixteen, mounted her horse in the dead of night and performed this service, and by breakfast-time the next morning the whole regiment was on its rapid march to Danbury. But the mischief had been accomplished.

Lamb’s book also has versions of the Ludington family tales of Sybil [to use the usual modern spelling, odd as it is] and her sister Rebecca guarding the homestead, “guns in their hands on the piazza,” and of the family hosting spy Enoch Crosby. Both those tales resurface in Johnson’s book.

This makes the Sybil Ludington legend a little more credible because:

• There’s only a 103-year lag between the ride and the earliest known written description of it, instead of 125 years. (Also in 1907, the story appeared in an issue of The Connecticut Magazine.)
• Lamb published for a national readership while Johnson published for the Ludington family, an uncritical audience.
• Lamb didn’t claim that Sybil’s ride turned out to be important, which fits the contemporaneous record. The Danbury raid was a success for the British army, and there still doesn’t seem to be any record of Col. Ludington’s militia unit getting into the fight.

That said, Lamb clearly relied on stories from the Ludington family; she mentioned no other sources, and lauded the colonel. Lamb didn’t cite documents to support most of her statements.

For example, Lamb wrote about Col. Ludington working closely with Gen. George Washington. The family claimed he was an “aide” to the commander at the Battle of White Plains in 1776. But the Ludington name appears in the commander-in-chief’s papers only three times, all after 1778 and all referring to the man’s house, not the man.

Lamb stated that Gen. William Howe offered a “large reward” for Ludington’s capture or killing. Johnson and later authors specified that the reward was 300 guineas. But no one seems to have provided a source for such a specific statement.

So I’m still skeptical until more solid evidence turns up.

A Real Ride by a "Country Girl"

It's not hard to figure out why the legend of Sybil Ludington and the Danbury raid became so popular in the twentieth century. It's a good story, with an individual protagonist and a beginning, middle, and end. At sixteen, Sybil was young enough for schoolgirls to identify with her. Most important, her tale is one of the few anecdotes from the Revolution that shows an individual woman contributing to an American military victory through physical activity (though not using weapons herself—heaven forbid!). Sybil’s story came to light just as women's suffrage was finally gathering steam, and it served the values of that time and the decades that followed.

We know many other women were active in the Revolutionary movement, but they usually remained in the domestic sphere, worked collectively, and didn't get noticed. (Of course, the same applies to most males. But the exceptional males far outnumber the exceptional females.)

Here's a better documented example of a young woman helping the American forces, a first-person account from the Memoir of Col. Benjamin Tallmadge, published in 1858. In December 1777 Tallmadge (shown here in a portrait based on a sketch by John Trumbull) was a twenty-three-year-old cavalry officer attached to the Continental Army at Valley Forge. His unit received an assignment that called on their ability to travel fast and light:

being informed that a country girl had gone into Philadelphia, with eggs, instructed to obtain some information respecting the enemy, I moved my detachment to Germantown, where they halted, while, with a small detachment, I advanced several miles towards the British lines, and dismounted at a tavern called the Rising Sun, in full view of their out-posts.

Very soon I saw a young female coming out from the city, who also came to the same tavern. After we had made ourselves known to each other, and while she was communicating some intelligence to me, I was informed that the British light horse were advancing. Stepping to the door, I saw them at full speed chasing in my patrols, one of whom they took.

I immediately mounted, when I found the young damsel close by my side, entreating that I would protect her. Having not a moment to reflect, I desired her to mount behind me, and in this way I brought her off more than three miles up to Germantown, where she dismounted.

During the whole ride, although there was considerable firing of pistols, and not a little wheeling and charging, she remained unmoved, and never once complained of fear after she mounted my horse.

I was delighted with this transaction, and received many compliments from those who became acquainted with it.

That was apparently Tallmadge's introduction to the world of intelligence. Eventually that would become a major responsibility for him; as Washington besieged New York, he asked Tallmadge as a Long Islander to run the spy ring inside the city. Tallmadge was extremely circumspect about those activities when he wrote his memoir. Though his other papers include plenty of evidence to confirm his intelligence activities, including a codebook, for his children he wrote only that Gen. Washington “requested me to take charge of a particular part of his private correspondence.”

The Rising Sun tavern between Philadelphia and Germantown seems to have been a regular rendezvous point for exchanging intelligence in the winter of 1777-78. Commissary of prisoners Elias Boudinot wrote in his journal about rendezvousing there with "a little poor looking insignificant Old Woman" who passed him important news hidden in "a dirty old needle book, with various small pockets in it." (That could have been Lydia Darragh, whose daughter Ann later told much more romantic stories about her mother's spying during that winter. Darragh, born in Ireland in 1729, certainly wasn't a "country girl" or "young damsel," but her daughter certainly wouldn't have depicted her as a "poor looking insignificant Old Woman.")

Who was the brave young woman Tallmadge met south of Germantown? What information did she provide the Continental commanders? I don't know. I don't think anyone does. She was a spy, after all, so she kept her mouth shut. Even Tallmadge, at that stage in his career, probably wasn't privy to all the details. And since we don't know that young woman's name or her mission or the results, we can't make an inspiring "true" story out of her, as people have with Sybil Ludington. Pity.

Sybil Ludington: the legend’s beginning

I can't help but notice that one of the searches that commonly makes Boston 1775 pop up on Google is "Sybil Ludington," even though I've written only one posting about her, and that a skeptical one. So in the interests of completeness and a shameless grasp for ratings (it is still November, after all), I'm posting the text on which her legend is based and some more commentary.

The crucial passage is from Willis Fletcher Johnson’s Colonel Henry Ludington: A Memoir, published in New York by Lavinia Elizabeth Ludington and Charles Henry Ludington in 1907. Of the British raid on 26 Apr 1777, Johnson wrote:

At four o’clock Danbury was fired. At eight or nine o’clock that evening a jaded horseman reached Colonel Ludington’s home with the news. We may imagine the fire that flashed through the veteran’s veins at the report of the dastardly act of his former chief. But what to do? His regiment was disbanded, its members scattered at their homes, many at considerable distances. He must stay there, to muster all who came in. The messenger from Danbury could ride no more, and there was no neighbor within call.

In this emergency he turned to his daughter Sibyl, who, a few days before, had passed her sixteenth birthday, and bade her to take a horse, ride for the men, and tell them to be at his house by daybreak.

One who even now rides from Carmel to Cold Spring will find rugged and dangerous roads, with lonely stretches. Imagination can only picture what it was a century and a quarter ago, on a dark night, with reckless bands of “Cowboys” and “Skinners” abroad in the land. But the child performed her task, clinging to a man’s saddle, and guiding her steed with only a hempen halter, as she rode through the night, bearing the news of the sack of Danbury.

There is no extravagance in comparing her ride with that of Paul Revere and its midnight message. Nor was her errand less efficient than his. By daybreak, thanks to her daring, nearly the whole regiment was mustered before her father’s house at Fredericksburgh, and an hour or two later was on the march for vengeance on the raiders.

Already we see the poetic language, the dire details, the emphasis on a lone young female, and the comparison to Paul Revere—all hallmarks of the Sybil Ludington legend in the decades to come. But we don't see any sources specified for this episode, anywhere in the book. Furthermore, as I discussed before, Johnson was a journalist for hire, his book was published by the Ludington family itself, and this first version of Sybil’s story dates from 125 years after the event it describes. So as a historical authority, this passage is the equivalent of me telling you about something very heroic one of my relatives did in 1881 with no documentation.

Many descriptions of Sybil Ludington claim that her ride had a significant effect. For instance, the article at About.com says that the men she summoned “were able to stop the British advance and push them back to their boats, in the Battle of Ridgefield.”

That reveals a misunderstanding of the British goals and outcome. The Danbury raid, like several other raids by the British military on southern Connecticut during the war, was designed to destroy American military supplies, disrupt shipping, and discourage raids on Long Island, but not to take and hold territory. As this Connecticut SAR page describes, the British troops landed, marched north to Danbury and set American supplies ablaze, then marched south to Ridgefield to rendezvous with their boats. Continental troops under Gen. David Wooster (above) and Benedict Arnold tried to cut off the British raiders, but didn't succeed.

Thus, the Ludington regiment would not have been “able to stop the British advance”; the raiders were already withdrawing. The Americans actually tried to keep the British from their boats, not “push them back to their boats.” And the Americans lost. Although the British took more casualties, they achieved their goals, Wooster died, and the Danbury raid is considered a British victory. But a legend shouldn’t end that way, so we rewrite the history a bit to make Sybil’s ride produce an American victory.

The 30 April 1777 Connecticut Journal printed a detailed account of the Danbury raid, also stressing American accomplishments to keep up the wartime spirit. However, that article didn’t mention troops from Dutchess County, New York—Col. Ludington’s militia regiment. (In contrast, “Col. Luttington” is mentioned in the New England Chronicle's account of a British raid on the Tarrytown area on 5 October; “they endeavoured to surround him, which he perceiving, ordered his men to retreat.”) Maybe the New York militiamen were there; maybe they were on their way but didn’t make it in time for the serious fighting; maybe the whole story is a myth. In any event, we still don’t have any sources on the Ludingtons’ roles from before the twentieth century.

Sybil Ludington: woman of legend

In February, I gave a paper on "grandmothers' tales" about Revolutionary heroes at the University of Connecticut. (See this earlier posting for download instructions if you're inclined.) Since state resources seemed to be paying for my hotel room (and a nice room it turned out to be), I decided I should include a Connecticut example. I was also hoping to find a few more examples of good stories from the Revolution that also had good historical documentation.

So I dug into the story of Sybil Ludington. I'd first heard about her from a publishing colleague who's a Ludington by birth, but Sybil's story has now been told in many a website, children's book, and episode of Liberty's Kids. She was the sixteen-year-old eldest child of Henry Ludington, a militia colonel in Dutchess County, New York. On 26 April 1777, British troops raided the Connecticut town of Danbury, destroying supplies for the Continental Army and some houses. An exhausted rider carried word of the British landing to Col. Ludington. Sybil volunteered to ride on through the stormy night to summon his militiamen from their farms. She thus allowed them and her father to participate in a counterattack the next day.

As I noted in my paper, this story has a pleasing structure: an individual protagonist, clear goal and obstacles, and success. For the purposes of inspiring children, it featured a young person—and a young woman at that. But was that how events actually unfolded in 1777, or the shape into which storytellers had (wittingly or unwittingly) massaged those events in subsequent years?

So I looked for the earliest version of Sybil Ludington's tale. All paths seemed to lead back to a single book: Colonel Henry Ludington: A Memoir, written by Willis Fletcher Johnson and published in 1907. There aren't a lot of copies of that book around, and as I searched for one I kept seeing red flags. The biography was published by two of Col. Ludington's grandchildren, not an independent press. Although Johnson wrote other histories, he did so as a writer for hire, not an independent researcher. (He also wrote several political biographies.) And of course it's not a good sign when the earliest published source for a story dates from 125 years after the event.

Last week I tracked down a copy of that book at the New-York Historical Society (a copy donated by one of the Ludingtons who published it). Johnson's introduction states:

The most copious and important data have been secured from the manuscript collections of two of Henry Ludington’s descendants, Mr. Lewis S. Patrick, of Marinette, Wisconsin, who has devoted much time and painstaking labor to the work of searching for and securing authentic information of his distinguished ancestor, and Mr. Charles Henry Ludington, of New York, who has received many valuable papers and original documents and records from a descendant of Sibyl Ludington Ogden, Henry Ludington’s first-born child.

So for a moment things were looking up: Sybil or her children left "valuable papers and original documents and records." Did they include a first- or second-hand account of her ride in 1777? Yet Johnson's information on Sybil also had big holes: he didn't have solid evidence about the first name of her husband, referring to him as Edward, Edmund, or Henry Osgood. Johnson also consistently spelled her name as "Sibyl," apparently relying on a page from the family Bible, while most authors today use "Sybil." Her gravestone says "Sibbell," and gives her husband's name as "Edmond."

Alas, when I read Johnson's description of Sybil's ride, I found no quotations from those "original documents" or citations of them. The same applied to all the book's other anecdotes about her activities during the Revolution. Apparently Johnson based those accounts on what his introduction calls "some oral traditions of whose authenticity there is substantial evidence"—though he described none of that evidence nor how those traditions came to him.

Furthermore, when Johnson did present documentation, his analysis went well beyond what those records support. He reprinted celebrated spy Enoch Crosby's 1832 pension application, which mentions Col. Ludington twice among other contacts and American officers. But then he added unsupported statements that Ludington "furnished numerous other members of the Secret Service," and sent their reports "to the Committee of Safety and some to the headquarters of General Washington." (The Library of Congress's online collection of George Washington's papers turns up three likely references to Col. "Luddington" from 1779 on, none involving espionage.) Johnson wrote that Sybil and her sister "were also privy to Crosby’s doings, and had a code of signals, by means of which they frequently admitted him in secrecy and safety to the house." Yet Crosby's pension application, which was required by law to state details about his Revolutionary service and commanding officers, said nothing about taking frequent refuge in Col. Ludington's house.

In short, I have to classify the story of Sybil Ludington as legend, not a documented Revolutionary event. Maybe she rode to alert the county militia in April 1777, and did the other things that Johnson's book ascribes to her. But maybe, like other grandmothers I discussed in my paper, she told inspiring but not necessarily accurate stories to her children (or to customers at her tavern), never intending that they'd end up in the collections of the New-York Historical Society and similar organizations.

The thin evidence in Johnson's book and elsewhere hasn't stopped twentieth-century Sybil Ludington fans from spinning off new statements about her. Though Johnson and his sources never stated the length or route of her ride, there are now maps of it. The Danbury library has a 1961 statue of her. Some accounts give her horse the name Star, and include direct quotes of what she yelled as she rode. But does any version cite sources for that information that go back more than one century?

ADDENDUM: How did the Ludingtons affect the Danbury raid?