This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we continue with our American stories.

Deborah Samson became a hero of the American Revolution

when she disguised herself as a man and joined the Patriot Forces.

Here to tell her story is the author of Deborah Sampson,

The Girl Who Went to War.

Let's take a listen.

I am Marilyn Gilbert Kamechak, and I'm going to be telling the story of Deborah Sampson.

I was on the Internet some years ago and was looking and talking about a woman who fought in the revolutionary

war successfully disguised as a man. This piqued my interest because there were definite rules against this.

They could be flogged, jailed or put out of the church, any manner of things.

What made me want to go to the work and

trouble of writing about her was her extraordinary courage and her amazing

patriotic zeal that she thought to be one among those who tried to pass and

succeeded without being discovered.

She was born in 1760 in Plympton, Massachusetts.

Her family came over on the Mayflower.

But at five years, her father deserts the family

and she's sent to work for a mother's cousin as a maid. At eight,

she's a maid to 80-year-old widow Thatcher. At 10, she is sent to work for the Thomas family

as an indentured servant, although she begged them continually to let her go to school.

They would not let her go to school.

...