Uncovering The Remarkable Story Of Sybil Ludington

By Jan Howard

Listen, my children, and you shall hear

Of a lovely feminine Paul Revere

Who rode an equally famous ride

Through a different part of the countryside

Where Sybil Ludington’s name recalls

A ride as daring as that of Paul’s.

 –Excerpt from poem by Berton Braley

 

Sybil Ludington was an unsung hero for many years, her story handed down through family stories. Unlike the more celebrated Paul Revere, the 16-year-old girl’s 40-mile ride on a rainy April night in 1777 to summon her father’s regiment to arms was not popularly known outside the New York/Connecticut area.

Not much was known about her life after her ride, according to author Vincent Dacquino, the biographer of this strong, courageous young woman.

Mr Dacquino discussed Sybil Ludington at a program April 9 sponsored by the Newtown Historical Society at the Cyrenius H. Booth Library. The weather that rainy night was, Mr Dacquino noted, a recreation of the weather on the night of Sybil’s ride.

Mr Dacquino’s book, Sybil Ludington: The Call to Arms, has brought to light some little known information about her life following the ride.

“She lived to be 77 years old,” Mr Dacquino said. Despite this, he noted, there was only one paragraph about her life from age 16 to 77 in the many articles written about her over the years.

“The entire paragraph was wrong,” he said. “They were teaching children wrong.”

Mr Dacquino first crossed paths with Sybil four years ago when he passed a sign in Mahopac Falls, N.Y., that read “Sybil Ludington rode horseback over this road the night of April 26, 1777, to call out Col Ludington’s regiment to repel the British at Danbury, Connecticut.”

Though he had seen the sign before, this was the first time he had read it. He wanted to know more about Sybil Ludington, so he visited the Mahopac Public Library, beginning what would become extensive, painstaking research into her previously unknown life.

The Mahopac Library has a file of magazine and newspaper clippings about the girl who, like Paul Revere, roused the countryside against the British.

“This woman was 16 years old,” Mr Dacquino said. “As I went through the file, her story began to unfold.” But the file also pointed to a mystery that soon became a three-year obsession for Mr Dacquino. The unwritten story of Sybil’s life after her ride led him to Washington, D.C., and through New York State several times. “I had to know about this girl,” he said.

In April 1777 British General William Tyron invaded Connecticut from Long Island Sound with 2,000 men, intent upon burning Danbury, a depot for revolutionary stores, before marching on to Dutchess and Westchester Counties. As Danbury burned, a messenger was sent 17 miles to the home of Sybil’s father, Col Henry Ludington. Because the messenger was exhausted, it fell to Sybil to ride through enemy-infested woods to summon her father’s regiment and halt the British advance. Sybil completed the ride, and by morning the colonel and his men were ready to take part in what would be the successful rout of the British.

Though her ride compares to that of Paul Revere, Mr Dacquino’s book notes that there the similarity ends. Paul Revere, in his 40s, rode 12 miles of well-traveled country roads near Boston. Sybil, 16, rode in the pouring rain through dense woods that harbored “cowboys” and “skinners.” Paul Revere, he said, was one of three men who took on the mission, and he was arrested before he completed the ride. Sybil made her journey alone, and completed the ride.

Her ride was “amazing,” Mr Dacquino said. The cowboys, he explained, were pro-British and plundered farmhouses and stole cattle. The skinners were patriots. Both were dangerous bands of men who terrorized the countryside, robbed and killed innocent victims, and molested women. Her father, he explained, was one of the best colonels in the American army, and because he wanted to stop the cowboys and skinners, they were out to kill him. Also, British General Howe had offered a reward of 300 English guineas for Ludington “dead or alive.”

“When Sybil was out there, she was taking her life in her hands,” Mr Dacquino said.

“Here’s a girl who deserves recognition,” he said. But despite Sybil’s historic ride, she received little attention at the time, though her story was preserved and passed down. In 1907 her ride was mentioned in family memoirs about Col Ludington, written by Willis Fletcher Johnson.

In 1896, a New York historian writing the history of Putnam County had mentioned Sybil in one sentence, as one of Col Ludington’s 12 children. The book contained the wrong name of her husband, which threw off historians and researchers for years, Mr Dacquino said.

In 1935, the Daughters of the American Revolution were instrumental in getting historic markers placed along the route of Sybil’s ride, and in 1961, world famous sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington created a bronze statue of Sybil on her horse that is located at Lake Gleneida in Carmel, N.Y. A three-foot replica stands in the courtyard of the Danbury Library.

In 1975 an eight-cent postage stamp was created in her honor. She has also been the subject of a play, an opera, and poems written by Berton Braley, Rev George Nobel, and Marjorie Barstow Greenbie. Teachers in the area have included her ride in their social studies curriculum, and every year children write poems and papers about her. But no book about her life was written, and much of the published material contained errors, Mr Dacquino said.

Among the mysteries he uncovered were the real name of Sybil’s husband, his occupation, and where and how he died, where they lived, and the name of her child. These facts either were unknown prior to his research or were in error.

It was erroneously believed that Sybil had married Henry Ogden, according to the 1886 History of Putnam. In the Ludington memoirs, her husband was listed as Edward. He was believed to be a lawyer in Catskill, N.Y. He was also identified as Edmund, her childhood sweetheart. They were believed to have had four sons and two daughters.

“Wrong, wrong, wrong,” Mr Dacquino said. He found no birth or death certificates, school records, or burials for children. There were no cases or mention of her husband in law books. Except for donations of money to a school in 1793 and 1795 in Catskill, there is no other mention of him.

“He was mentioned twice, there was no grave, and he was gone,” Mr Dacquino said.

“I looked everywhere, but there were no six children. Something was definitely wrong,” he said.

Sybil died in 1839. If anyone had visited her grave, they would have known the name of her husband was Edmond Ogden from her tombstone, he noted. Because he was born and raised in Connecticut, Edmond could not have been Sybil’s childhood sweetheart. His military records show he was a resident of Connecticut when he entered the service in 1776. He and Sybil were married on October 24, 1784, in Patterson, N.Y.

When researchers first looked at Henry Ogden, they found he had six children and was a lawyer in Catskill. However, he was not Sybil’s husband, but her son, her only child.

When Mr Dacquino looked up Sybil Ogden in a Mormon library, he found Edmund Ogden’s birth and death dates. He located further information on Edmond in The American Genealogist by Donald Lines Jacobus. Edmond died in 1799 of yellow fever. His body was most likely cremated.

Mr Dacquino found more information about Sybil and Edmond when he found she had applied for a pension from the United States government, based on her husband’s military service. It told where he had served and when. Despite a letter from her sister stating she had witnessed the marriage, Sybil’s pension request was rejected for lack of a marriage certificate.

“She died poor and was buried in Patterson, N.Y,” Mr Dacquino said.

Edmond Ogden was a hero in his own right, Mr Dacquino said. Military records show he enlisted at Weston, Conn., in 1776. He served two stints in the army and one in the navy, in which he served on board the Bonhomme Richard under John Paul Jones and on other vessels.

Piece by piece, Mr Dacquino put the story of Sybil and Edmond together. Deeds and census records helped locate where the family had lived. Edmond is identified as a farmer in a 1793 deed of land in Frederickstown in Dutchess County. He also was the innkeeper of a public house. The family moved to Catskill after the war, where Edmond ran a tavern.

All these various records “gave me the story of Sybil Ludington from birth to death,” Mr Dacquino said.

Sybil was 38 years old in 1799 when Edmond died of yellow fever, leaving her with their 14-year-old child, Henry. She obtained an innkeeper’s license and became a tavern owner.

 “She became a model for all single mothers,” Mr Dacquino said. “She was the only female who was running a tavern.” Six years later, she sold the tavern for almost $3,000, four times the $732 she had paid for it. She then moved to Unadilla, where she lived for 30 years.

Her son became a lawyer and later an assemblyman. He and his wife, Julia Peck, had four sons and two daughters.

Despite his extensive research, Mr Dacquino said there are still pieces missing in her story. “I’d love to know the house they lived in in Patterson,” he said.

“She has become an obsession. She was a girl who believed in freedom,” Mr Dacquino said. “She was one tough woman.”

Mr Dacquino has been a teacher in the Westchester, N.Y., school system for many years. He is the founder of the Peanut-Butter-and-Jelly Writing Academy for young writers. He is a resident of Mahopac, N.Y.

Sybil Ludington: The Call to Arms was published by Purple Mountain Press, PO Box 309, Fleischmanns, NY 12430-0309.