sybil ludington

Sybil Ludington’s Ride and the Erasure of Women

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Today, in 1777, two years after Paul Revere’s famous ride, at age 16, Sybil Ludington rode all night on horseback, forty miles to rally militiamen after the Brits burned down Danbury, Connecticut. Whether the ride occurred has been in question since about 1956. The accounts of the ride come from the Ludington family, possibly in an effort to promote tourism.

Last week in talking about Revere, I asked who will warn us this time? I linked to the Alt National Park Service, an invaluable source for what is going on in this administration – clarifications, corrections and call outs of the lies and falsehoods perpetuated since before Election Day.

In reference to Sybil Ludington, I have the same questions. On social media we’re told of the women, so many women who are standing up to the fascism, and yet, when a woman warns us in 1777, we dismiss it as ‘maybe it didn’t really happen.’ And to be honest, I don’t really know if it happened. I do know that when women accomplish anything there is someone there to take the credit, to claim the discovery, and to shush the little lady. We dismissed Kamala Harris, the Vice President for four years, Senator before that. We dismissed Hillary Clinton, First Lady for eight years, Secretary of State for four, Senator before that, and accomplished lawyer before that. At what point, will women be taken at face value, and I don’t mean at pretty face value.

How can the women save us if we won’t listen to or acknowledge them?

Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John, “Don’t forget the ladies.” We are not only forgotten but ignored, blamed, and pushed aside while (many, too many) men crush this country under crippling debt, ruin families, arrest women for biological functions, and allow them to die for those same reasons. We are not less than. We don’t need to apologize for existing.

If we were treated as we should be, as equality requires us to be, we wouldn’t need to constantly put ourselves in the stories to uplift us. We would already be there, and there wouldn’t be a question as to whether it is a true story or a folktale.

Sybil Ludington’s Ride

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Sybil Ludington postage stamp, USPS, public domain. (c)2019

​We all know Paul Revere and we practically take the Longfellow poem as historical fact and we pass our elementary social studies exams and move on, probably never thinking about the rest of the country during The Revolutionary War. Several years ago I read a novel by former President Jimmy Carter that centered on Georgia during the Revolution. It was eye-opening in that I never considered the part of the colonies further south than Virginia. As a New Yorker, I am both excited but also sad that it took this long into adulthood before I even heard her name and then to discover a new Revolutionary hero from right here in New York: Sybil Ludington.

She wasn’t very widely known outside of her home areas around Kent and Patterson, New York.

On April 26, 1777 (two hundred forty-two years ago today), at age 16, Sybil rode her horse, Star to alert the Revolutionary militia forces in Putnam County, New York and as far as Danbury, Connecticut. Her ride was more than twice the distance of that than Paul Revere, longer than any of the other men to have made similar rides. She began at around 9pm, and rode forty miles in darkness until about dawn.

Her father was Colonel Henry Ludington and Sybil’s intention was to warn her father’s troops. It was believed that Danbury was targeted because they had a Continental Army supply depot there. At home, she also thwarted a royalist from capturing her father and turning him over to the British.

A statue of her on her horse depicting the ride is erected in Carmel, New York. That statue is also the ending place of a yearly 50K footrace that approximately follows her historic ride.

She is buried in Patterson, NY and has had her ride commemorated on a postage stamp in 1975.

Learn more here:

Historic Patterson

Sybil Ludington’s Statue in Carmel, NY