Sybil Ludington

On the banks of Lake Glenida in Carmel, New York, stands a dramatic and animated equestrian statue of the female Paul Revere of the American Revolution. 16-year-old Sybil Ludington sits astride her steed, Star. Ludington made her ride on April 26, 1777, during a driving rainstorm, traveling forty miles, and unlike Revere, avoiding capture. She learned that the British were planning to attack nearby Danbury, Connecticut the location of a stockpile of provisions for Continental Army. Her father, Henry, was a Colonel in the militia in command of 400 men. Not unlike Revere who two years earlier roused the communities outside of Boston to British troops being on the march to seize arms, Ludington spurred her horse, prodding him with a stick to raise the alarm in Putnam County, New York. The British however were successful in their raid on Danbury, but roused by Ludington’s alarm, the Patriots encountered the British at nearby Ridgefield, Connecticut and were successful in driving them back to Long Island Sound. Unlike Revere who had a patriotic poem written about him by a famous poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ludington remained obscured in history until in 1961 the Daughters of the American Revolution commissioned noted sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington to replicate Ludington in bronze.

In 1784, a year after America achieved its independence, Ludington married Edmond Ogden bearing him a son, named Henry, after her father. She died at the age of 77 and was interred in the same cemetery as her beloved father. Not unlike other less known figures of the American Revolution, Ludington was honored with a postage stamp during the Bicentennial in the Contributors to the Cause series.