Sybil Ludington - Infinite Women

Born: April 5 1761, United States
Died: 26 February 1839
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA

Women at war: Sybil Ludington and Laura Secord transcript

This biography is reprinted in full with permission from the National Women’s History Museum (United States of America). It was Edited by Debra Michals, PhD (2017). NWHM biographies are generously supported by Susan D. Whiting. All rights reserved.

A young American patriot, Sybil Ludington was just 16 years old when she made a night-time ride rallying Patriot soldiers.

Born in New York in 1761, Ludington was the eldest of Henry and Abigail’s twelve children. In addition to working as a farmer, Ludington’s father was a gristmill owner who served in the military for over sixty years, including during the French and Indian War. He was loyal to the British crown until 1773, when he switched sides and joined the Patriots in the American Revolution. He was promoted to Colonel of his local regiment. His land was along a route between Connecticut and the coast of Long Island Sound that was vulnerable to British attack.

On April 26, 1777, Colonel Ludington received word from a rider that the nearby town of Danbury was under attack by British troops and needed help. At the time, Ludington’s regiment had disbanded for planting season, and his men were miles apart at their respective farms. With the rider too tired to continue and Colonel Ludington focused on preparing for battle, young Sybil rose to the cause. Some accounts say she volunteered; others that her father asked for her service, but either way, she rode through the night alerting the Colonel’s men of the danger and urging them to return to the fight. She rode all night through dark woods and in the rain, covering anywhere from 20 to 40 miles (estimates vary). By the time she returned home, hundreds of soldiers were gathering to fight the British. Ludington’s troops arrived too late to win the battle, though they did fight with departing British soldiers.

After the war, Ludington married in 1784, at age 23, when she met Edward Ogden. The couple had one son, Henry, and lived in Catskill, New York. Ludington’s husband died of yellow fever in 1799. Four years later, she bought a tavern and helped her son become a lawyer. When she sold the tavern, she earned a tidy profit, three times what she paid for the land, and purchased a home for her son and his family, where she also resided. After her son died in 1838, Ludington applied for a Revolutionary War pension, since her husband had served in the military. Her pension was denied, claiming insufficient proof of marriage. At age seventy-seven, Ludington died in poverty.

Ludington was honored with a stamp by the Postal Service in 1975. There is a statue of her by Lake Gleneida in Carmel, New York and there are historical markers tracing the route of her ride through Putnam County.

The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.

Dramatisations also have a significant impact on how we perceive the past. Imagine, for instance, if Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had chosen, instead of Paul Revere, to immortalise the story of Sybil Ludington in verse. Her nighttime ride was the more impressive feat, to be sure—she was 16, to Revere’s 41, when she rode 40 miles, compared to Revere’s 12.5 miles. He was one of dozens of riders that night and, unlike Sybil, he got caught and didn’t actually complete his task. Sybil, on the other hand, was successful when she rode to warn the roughly 400 militiamen under her father’s command that British troops were planning to raid Danbury, Connecticut, where the Continental Army had a supply depot. On the way, she woke people in their homes, reportedly yelling “The British are burning Danbury!” Previously, the teen had saved her father from capture by 50 Loyalists. When the mob approached their home, Sybil lit candles around the house and had her siblings march in front of the windows in military fashion, creating the illusion that troops were guarding the house and causing the Loyalists to flee.
Yet even the national Daughters of the American Revolution, in 1996, said that the evidence was not strong enough to support their criteria for a war heroine, and they removed a book about her from their headquarters’ bookstore. However, the DAR chapter near her historic home says that her exploit was documented, and it continues to honour her. This is an example of how oral histories are often dismissed, where written records are valued more highly—ignoring the long history of oral traditions, and the fact that not everyone had the luxury of literacy, time to write, and being valued enough to have their papers preserved. This is why even fictionalised accounts can contribute to preserving legacies—if they’re done well.