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Posted on 06/11/2009 8:08:56 AM PDT by Pharmboy
Revere thoroughly deserves his place in American history, but another courageous American has been ill-served by those who write books about the Revolutionary War. Revere was 40 at the time of his journey, but she was a girl of 16.
Born at Patterson, Putnam County, N.Y., on April 5, 1761, she was the eldest of 12 children born to Henry and Abigail Ludington. On the stormy night of April 26, 1777, she is said to have been putting her younger siblings to bed when the family had a visitor. Close to exhaustion, a messenger had come to tell her father that the British were at Danbury, Conn., some 25 miles away, and that they had set fire to the town. Help was urgently needed.
Henry Ludington was a colonel commanding the 7th Dutchess County Militia, a volunteer force drawn from local farmers.
snip...He would be taking on a vastly superior foe. On April 25, 1777, a 2,000-strong British force,
snip... But before that victory, the local countrymen had to be alerted. Who could be spared to do this? The messenger was at the end of his strength, and besides he was unfamiliar with the local terrain.
Sybil volunteered, and her father agreed (probably with misgivings). He was exposing his daughter to considerable danger. ..worse, the countryside was infested by lawless men who would show no mercy to a girl who was traveling alone.
On her newly acquired pony, Star, Sybil set off on her hazardous journey. It took her through the little towns of Carmel, Mahopac and Stormville. Throughout her journey, she shouted warnings of the danger from British troops and for the need of farmers to rally round their colonel. They did so, enabling Ludington to assemble his men and join the main force.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Thanks for posting this. I had never heard this story. There is so much in US history to learn!
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Issac Bissell
There is a statue in Carmel, NY, sculpted by Anna Hyatt Huntington and presented to the Enoch Crosby Chapter NSDAR.
Sybil rode a 40 mile route as shown below in a map by Fred C. Warner.
You'd think they'd know the difference between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War?
Nice story. I'm sure there were many more unsung heroes and heroines in this war that are only known to God.
Paul Revere was also a colonial cartoonist who drew works critical of the British empire.
It wasn’t just about a midnight ride.
Sounds remarkably like 16 year old Betsy Dowdy’s 50 mile ride across Currituck in North Carolina, on her wiry little Banks pony, Black Bess, to which she sang to encourage her to keep going. December, 1775.
From their perspective, it was. To the victors go the rights to write the history. The American “Civil War” is a case in point.
Thanks for posting.....seems we need some current day “warnings” from the young.....I’m sending this on to a niece and nephew who will learn a lot from the story.
I will pass this on, too. Great statue!
Thank you for your contributions to this thread...much appreciated.
And this line:
worse, the countryside was infested by lawless men who would show no mercy to a girl who was traveling alone
should be sobering for those who think lawlessness and depravity just started after 1962 or so, and who pine for bucolic "good old days."
Excerpt from “The Legend Of Betsy Dowdy”
Joe Dowdy and old man Sammy Jarvis lived on the “banks” opposite Knotts Island. They were near neighbors and intimate friends. Early in December, 1775, Jarvis went over to the “main” to hear news of Colonel Howe’s movements toward Great Bridge. When he returned home, late in the evening, he was greatly excited. He was impressed with the dangerous situation of the dwellers by the sea. He was constantly saying, “Dunmore and them blamed Britishers will come down the coast from Norfolk and steal all our Banks pony stock, and burn our houses, ding ‘em.” After a short rest and a hasty bite of supper, old man Jarvis went over to Dowdy’s to tell him the news.
Dowdy was a wrecker for the money that was in it, and a fisher for the food that was in it. He had grown rich by wrecking. We was always watching the sea. He was a devout man, always prayed for the safety of the poor sailor, who was exposed to the perils of the deep, and always closed with a silent supplication that if there should be a wreck, it might be on the Carrituck beach. He has prospered in the business of a wrecker, had saved many lives, and much wreckage and money. His visible store of chattels was beef cattle and banker ponies. He herded them by the hundred. Sammy Jarvis came in without ceremony, and was cordially received. “Well, Uncle Sammy,” said Dowdy, “what are the news; tell us all.” “Well, Joseph,” said Jarvis, “things are fogerty, Gregory, Colonel Isaac is hurrying up his Camden milish to join Howe, and Thomas Benbury, of Chowan, is pushing on his wagons of commissaries. If they don’t reach Great Bridge in time to bear a hand in the fight, they’ll hurry on to Norfolk and drive Dunmore out of the old town. But if Dunmore beats our folks at Great Bridge, then our goose is cooked, and our property all gone, all the gold and goods saved in our hard life work, and all our cattle and marsh ponies.” “You don’t tell me so,” said Dowdy. “Yes, it’s so, just as sure as Old Tom. (Thomas Benbury, of Chowan County) The only thing that can save us is General William Skinner, of Perquimans, and the militia, and he is too far away. We can’t get word to him in time.”
As Jarvis said these words slowly and with emphasis, Betsy Dowdy, Joe Dowdy’s young and pretty daughter, who was present with the family, said: “Uncle Sammy, do you say the Britishers will come and steal away all of our ponies?” “Yes,” said he. She replied, “I’d knock ‘em in the head with a conch shell first.” Betsy soon left the room. She went out to the herding pen and Black Bess was not there. She went to the marsh and called aloud “Bess! Bessie! Black Beauty.” The pretty pony heard the old familiar voice and came to the call. Besty took her by her silken mane, led her to the shelter, went into the house, brought out a blanket and also a small pouch of coin. She placed the blanket on the round back of the pony, sprang into the soft seat, and galloped over the hills and far away on her perilous journey. Down the beach she went, Black Bess doing her accustomed work. She reached the point opposite Church’s Island, dashed into the shallow ford of Currituck Sound, and reached the shore of the Island. On they sped, Black Bess gaining new impulse from every kind of gentle word from her rider.
http://www.fmoran.com/dowdy.html
Good story. Thanks for the post.
I’d like to remind folks of how dark it gets away from our modern cities - she wasn’t riding on a well lit bridle path!
“should be sobering for those who think lawlessness and depravity just started after 1962 or so, and who pine for bucolic “good old days.”
Not really, war and it’s aftermath always results in disorder. British order was being broken down and would not be replaced for some time. That is what was so infuriating about the Iraq war, many (especially the media) thought you should be able to bring down a government and instantaneously replace it with a fully functioning government.
It was even worse after the Civil War, especially in the south. There were bands of deserters and other renegades that preyed on citizens long after the war. I also remember times when there was much less crime and depravity than currently exists.
Good points.
Somehow the image of a girl riding around in the dark calling, “The British are coming.” must have caused more than a few chuckles among the farmers.
Never knew this story...thanks much for posting.
Outliers, outlanders, bushwackers, scalawags ... and carpetbaggers.
Deserters from both sides hid out in the backcountry hollars for years, and would come a-pillaging and marauding. Reconstruction "government" was filled with less than honest men, or outright incompetents. Everything in the countryside, and in many towns and cities, was in complete disarray.
Scratching out a bare subsistence from the ground was the rule for most. Families fell apart. Histories were all but lost. People from formerly prominent families were buried with just a rock for a marker. I've been up to an old, inactive family cemetery belonging to my paternal grandmother's people, "The Big Lot," trying to piece together who was who, buried where and when. Working on getting a Revolutionary War marker for two of them, and Confederate for several others. It's not an easy task, though, "reconstructing" things that just ceased being important when simple survival was at issue. Some things from Reconstruction, we'll never know.
That veritable pit of poverty and ignorance is something to which you'd better hope you're never subjected. It took us over a century to climb out of it. I'm the first college graduate in my family since before that war. Before, there were several. Educators, politicians, prominent people, fluent in Latin and French. After, their descendants were fortunate to retain full command of the English language.
There’s quite a bit of intriguing history from the late Colonial period in NC.
As well as her ancestors.
Sybil is recognized here on the Ludington Ancestry site.
LOL, this is 1 of the things I’ll never forget for some reason from my childhood.
I guess it was 5th grade when we had 1 of those stories in the “reading” books to do.
It was “Sybil’s Ride”.
I don’t recall the story details, but bottom line it was about a girl named Sybil who went off to warn people about the British, and it was either NY or CT.
I always find it ironic and insulting when Dem-type people cite RevWar references (or any Founding).
For the Dems, it would be something like, “heroically fighting for everyone to get money for nothing”.
Yes, but it IS the Washington Post, and the man is in America; not the Daily Mail.
It’s a mite confusing.
It was most definitely a civil war. Moreso than that other war.
Insurgents win - revolution
Insurgents lose - civil war
1 of the reasons they were the good old days was because they got their due justice. No sitting around in a posh “prison” for a couple years and out. Problems, yes; but ask my mom about Baltimore just 60 years ago. Things WERE different.
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The only reason I was taken aback by wb's naughty joke is, I didn't get the opportunity to think of it first. ;') Thanks both of you. |
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Sorry. I screwed up. (I wish we could edit our posts.)
But it’s still in the US.
There is quite a bit of history from the “earliest” Colonial Period too.
That early history has not been so overlooked, deliberately denied or deemed questionable and then appropriated for another state or region. I guess early settlers to the Colony of NC were just too backwoods to be held up as exemplars in the blossoming national mythos, lol. That, and the squabbling of our Lords Proprietors was just a little unseemly.
But then, you have Virginia, a powerhouse of economic and cultural might in every colonial era, and the same fate befell them, with Jamestown. Plymouth gets the credit, not them. I guess yet another group of squabbling English businessmen looking for fortune weren't quite so compelling as Puritans looking for sanctuary.
So, I sense a bit of bias, tracing back to the Civil War era, perhaps?
The origins of the story that is topic of this thread seem well verified, so I can't honestly say that this is the case, here. That Sybill Luddington has a US Postal Service commemorative stamp, and a statue in her honor is nice. But, there are others, equally brave and daring, and not entirely unknown to history, who have received no such honor. I try to commemorate them in my own small way.
I've always been intrigued by this particular story, especially what Betsy Dowdy is reputed to have said to her little Banker pony, what she called her: "Black Beauty." No book or movie credits or acknowledgement for that, that I am aware.
bttt
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