A Girl Called Samson

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide contain depictions of wartime violence, child abuse, enslavement, and the deaths of family members.

In a letter to a woman named Elizabeth, Deborah explains that she has decided to write down her story because she suspects that her life is nearing its end. She is also dissatisfied with the efforts of a newspaper columnist named Herman Mann to write a novel about her. She hopes that her story will serve as an inspiration “for generations of little girls who have not even been born” (1). She reflects that she initially saw the Revolutionary War as her only chance for freedom, but she had no idea of the pain and bloodshed that her own independence and that of her country would demand. Still, she doesn’t regret her choice because it led her to self-knowledge and allowed her to find the man she later married. She alludes to her bitter childhood as an indentured servant and wonders if that experience “lit a rebellion in [her] veins [that she has] never quelled” (3).

Reverend Sylvanus Conant takes Deborah Samson away from the verbally and physically abusive Widow Thatcher and brings her to her new assignment.