Who Am I?

Ruth Fuller knew just how to cheer up a sad child. I got my own room, my own bed, new clothes and everything a child could want. Ruth Fuller also thought that all children should learn to read and write. Sadly, three years later Ruth Fuller died. I was eight years old.

I was then given to the Thomas family where I worked as a indentured servant. The Thomas’s had eight boys. At the Thomas residence, I had a small room by the kitchen. I did all the house work chores and I also worked the field. Hard labor developed my physical strength. The Thomas boys also taught me how to use a musket. During the winter, there wasn’t much farm work so I went to school. I worked for the Thomas Family for ten years.

At the age of eighteen, I was old enough to live on my own. I became a school teacher at Middleborough. I was hired as a teacher because of all the schooling I had during the winters. I only had a few girls in my class out of twenty students. I taught these girls everything I taught the boys.

At the age of twenty-one, I joined the army. But you should know from 1782-1783, I kept a secret.

I fought in many battles, walked endless marches and saw thousands of people die. One day, I was injured at West Point, New York. We were in a battle when I felt something warm and oozy, dripping on my neck and then again in my boot. It was blood. Another soldier took me to the nearest hospital on his horse.

At the hospital, the doctor took care of the bullet in my neck then asked if I had any other injures. I did not tell him I still had the bullet in my thigh. If I had told him about my other injury, he would have discovered my secret. After the doctor left the room, I took my pocket knife and dug the bullet out myself painfully. My leg never did heal properly.

When I recovered, General Paterson heard of me and wanted me to be his personal orderly. I did become just that. I served his meals, cleaned his clothes, cleaned his musket, fed his horse and many other duties. Then when I was hospitalized with a fever in Philadelphia, the doctor attending me discovered my secret but never said anything. The doctor arranged for me to deliver a letter to General Washington. When I gave the letter to General Washington, I was so nervous because I knew it was the end of my military career. My secret was out. General Washington handed me my discharge papers and traveling money to return home.

What was my secret? I had joined the army when I wasn’t allowed to under the name of Robert Shurtliff. But I was honorably discharged from the army at West Point on October 25, 1783, by General Henry Knox.

I returned home and married. Together we had three children. Later I adopted Baby Susanna whose mother had died. I again taught in a nearby school.

About nine years from my discharge from the army, I was awarded a lump sum payment of thirty-four pounds by the State of Massachusetts for backpay which the army withheld upon my discharge. Finally in 1804, after Paul Revere sent a letter to Congress of my behalf, I started receiving a U.S. pension in the amount of four dollars a month.

I still wasn’t ready to settle down so during 1802, I traveled throughout New England and New York giving lectures and speeches about my time in the military. During the lectures and speeches, I wore my military uniform.

I died on April 29, 1827 in Sharon, Massachusetts, at age sixty-seven from yellow fever.

Who am I?