 “Listen, my children, and you shall hear / Of the midnight ride . . .”
Through the night of April 26, 1777, sixteen-year-old Sybil Ludington rode forty miles in a thunderstorm to muster militiamen against the British. She roused the countryside after her father, a militia colonel, received the message that drunken Redcoats were burning Danbury, Connecticut. The militiamen weren’t able to save Danbury, but they stopped the British advance. Soon afterward, energized by the incident, 3,000 Connecticut men joined the American army. Statues, historical markers, and a 1975 postage stamp commemorate this hero of the American Revolution. She rode twice as far as Paul Revere, so why didn’t I learn about her in school? Perhaps because Longfellow never wrote a poem about her. Maybe he tried and gave up. Ludington is a lot harder to rhyme than Revere.
11 Comments
Lisa Imhoff
4/22/2019 08:54:31 am
Interesting statue. She's riding sidesaddle. Both she and the horse look pretty energized, too. Yup, I just want to look at the statue and think about her! :)
Do you think she would really have ridden sidesaddle, or would she have gathered up her skirts and galloped astride? Her statue, like Longfellow's poem, is a cross between history and imagination as it honors its subject long after the actual event.
Lisa Imhoff
4/22/2019 06:13:02 pm
Or slipped on a pair of her dad's pants. Riding 40 miles sidesaddle in a skirt WOULD be a feat. I've ridden sidesaddle and it's quite secure.
Connie Gill
4/22/2019 09:51:12 am
Way to go Sarah!! I love learning history that includes the impacts women have made. We all need more of it!
Dennis Doren
4/22/2019 11:08:42 am
So, a 16 year old girl who did not have the "good sense" to stay out of the rain was considered more credible in her times than professional journalists today. After all, there is no record of listeners claiming her information was "fake news". And yes, it is interesting that I never heard of her, but long ago learned of Revere. Interesting comparison/contrast. If there had been British sympathizers in the countryside she rode through, would they have dismissed it as fake news? Perhaps her call to the militia had more in common with today's social-media-gone-viral posts than with professional journalism. We have this oddity of messaging, that professional journalism gets dismissed as fake news, while "news" on social media gets passed along uncritically even though much of it is fake. Lisa, I've seen older pictures (medieval or early modern Europe) of women in skirts riding astride. If you don't have hoops or bustles or such to worry about, tucking up a long, loose skirt doesn't seem that difficult. Maybe unseemly, but that probably wasn't Sybil's top concern.
Beth Genne sent the following "poem which I invite you or any other reader to emend or continue. Maybe it will be the beginning of an epic." Thanks, Beth! Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin. Archives
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