Sybil Ludington

Sybil Ludington (* 1761 in Dutchess County, † 1839 in Unadilla, New York) was the eldest of twelve children of Henry Ludington and one person in the American War of Independence. On the night of April 26, 1777 she brought her siblings straight to bed when the family received the news that the British had begun, which is about 40 km away Danbury down to burn. The troops of her father were scattered over a larger area and the then sixteen -year-old Sybil convinced her father that he let her ride to alert them.

Between 21 and clock dawn she rode in the dark for a distance of approximately 65 km. " Pattern at Ludington 's ," she urged the militia members on the farms. That night they rode through Carmel to Mahopac, then to Kent Cliffs and from there to Farmers Mills, where they took the way home. With a stick she drove her horse Star and to knock at the doors, with the musket her father, she defended herself against a highwayman. As she soaked and exhausted returned from the rain home, most of the 400 soldiers of her father were ready to march.

The men arrived too late to save Danbury, but could at the beginning of the Battle of Ridgefield the Governor of the colony of New York, General William Tryon and his men pushed aside on Long Iceland sound. Sybil was later commended by General George Washington.

After the War of Independence in 1784 Sybil married the lawyer Edmund Ogden of Catskill. The marriage went forth a son, Henry, whose son founded Fort Riley in Kansas later. Sybil lived until her death in Unadilla. She was buried beside her father in the Presbyterian Cemetery Patterson, New York.

A manufactured by Anna Hyatt Huntington Statue Sybil Ludingtons was built in 1961 in the vicinity of Carmel, a smaller copy is located on the property of the Association of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Washington, DC and another in Danbury, Connecticut. The United States Postal Service recalled in 1975 with a special stamp in the four-part series " Contributors to the Cause " on the occasion of the bicentenary of the founding of the United States of Sybil Ludington.