History Forgets, but God Remembers Every Unsung Hero

Did a 16-year-old girl really ride 40 miles through the rain in one night to warn the militia that the British were coming? Historians are still divided. This week Cydni and Sher dig into the story of Sybil Ludington, the so-called "female Paul Revere," and ask a much bigger question — how do we know what is actually true, especially about things we weren't there to see for ourselves? They also cover the brutal economic and human cost of the American Revolution, and why Washington's choice to forgive the Loyalists instead of punishing them is honestly kind of remarkable. This week's episode is "History Forgets, but God Remembers Every Unsung Hero" and we are so glad you are here!

This Week's Challenge
Take time this week to research a person from history you don't know much about and let their story inspire a deeper love and respect for those who sacrificed for the freedoms we have today.

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Show Notes

Drip-Drip Drop, Words and  Music by  Matt Hoiland
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Transcript

Episode 171 - History Forgets, but God Remembers Every Unsung Hero

Cydni: [00:00:00] I'm excited to talk about another amazing woman, in studying so many incredible women, I have to acknowledge there's currently in our life right now in America some of the most incredible women that we live among. Today, my friends and I met one at Jazzercise.

Sher: Of course you did. '

Cydni: When we walked in, this 64-year-old in full leopard skin Victoria's Secret workout gear- Wow ... greeted us, and she basically said, "Good luck keeping up with me." She was incredible. I've never seen someone's grandma move their hips the way she moved her hips during Jazzercise today. And we all left, feeling so inspired for what our future could look like. We've been dreaming too small, and now we're dreaming bigger. And I already loved her, but at the end of the class, she confessed she will never stop eating Velveeta cheese.

And I thought, "If I could look like that- ... and move my hips the way she's moving her hips and still eat Velveeta cheese, I just need to [00:01:00] dream bigger." welcome to the Cydni and Sher Podcast. We're so glad you're here. '

 I'm excited to get going on this one. I really do love what we're learning about because my summer's already been chaotic with water parks and arcades, and yours, you're doing treasure hunts. 

Sher: I decided to help Shelly with summer school. What an idiot I am. But I'm done for a hot minute.

I don't have to do anything for a while now. 

Cydni: Well, I haven't done a treasure hunt for anybody, so I'm impressed that you did a treasure hunt for 11 students on a nice summer morning. You're amazing. 

Sher: They ran their little hearts out. It was fun, but now I'm tired. 

Cydni: Well, if you wanna teach them Jazzercise, you should look- into that. 

Sher: I should take them over with the dancing grandma dressed in leopard. 

Cydni: There's actually- That'd be 

Sher: awesome ... 

Cydni: dancing grandmas. There were several there. 

Sher: That's fantastic. 

Cydni: I know. My friends and I, for our mid-life hobby, outside of podcasting for myself, we've been taking so many different classes, and Jazzercise was on the list. And so, it [00:02:00] was either boxing or Jazzercise, because you have to try new things. And I was terrified, because I don't dance, and they were better than I was, but they were encouraging. Deborah, she made some homemade bread for everybody. Yeah. She was there. She told me to just stick with it. It was great.

Sher: Deborah's so nice. 

Cydni: Deborah was the nicest. I was like, "Are you a Relief Society state president by chance?" "Just wondering." 

But we can move on from Jazzercise, 

Sher: all right. So today, Cydni, we're gonna talk about Sybil Ludington. She is somebody from the American Revolution, and we're gonna start in the year 1777. So Cydni, the Revolution started in 1775, and by 1777, it's not going so well.

We started off really hot, and we're doing really well, and then we kinda started petering out. in 1777, though, things are gonna finally start changing a little bit for us. But Colonel Henry Ludington- was, Sybil's father. And her dad was the commander of the local militia in Putnam County, New [00:03:00] York.

He had also been a soldier in the French and Indian War. He owned a store. He was a member of the legislature in his colony from 1771 to 1781. He was also a trustee of the Presbyterian Church. So he's a pretty prominent man. Now, when the Revolution started, he commanded the 7th Regiment of the Duchess County Militia, and later he became an aide-de-camp to George Washington. He became part of a spy ring with John Jay, and he also married Abigail Ledington, who Cydni, I learned, was his cousin.

Cydni: But that was pretty common keeping that blood pure. 

Sher: Yeah, I think it more had to do with keeping the property in the family, but- Mm ... you know, whatever. 

Cydni: Do what you 

Sher: have to do sometimes. But, but this is the thing that was weird. I 

Cydni: like that there's something 

Sher: that's 

Cydni: weird 

Sher: It's, 

Cydni: it's- That wasn't the weird thing 

Sher: No

just 

Cydni: wait. 

Sher: It gets worse. I did not know this until we were getting ready for this episode, but he was 21 when [00:04:00] he got married, and Abigail was 14. 

Cydni: Yeah, I mean, sometimes you marry your younger cousin. Your underage cousin- ... to keep the property together.

You know what's kind of unfair is that was a very common practice for this time, all of it, and I bet it has to hurt a little bit for them to hear us talk about it in this way, that we're like, "Idiots, marrying your cousin."

"What a loser," and they're like, "Guys," like, "that was normal. Everyone did it. It wasn't weird." And we're like, "You weirdos." "You creep." But it was common for them. 

Sher: It was more common. However, getting married at 14 was still unusual for the time.

Cydni: Like, at least 15 and a 

Sher: half.

At, at least 15 and a half. I looked it up, and in New England, it actually was more common for the women to get married in their early 20s 

Cydni: Why do I just automatically assume everywhere across the board was marrying off 12 to 14-year-olds? I don't know. And there was, like, five wives [00:05:00] for everybody.

Sher: I always think that, too, but I looked it up just before we started, and I was really surprised to learn that this was really unusual for her to get married that young, Well, history doesn't know much about Sybil's mother, Abigail, but here is a guess about why she ended up getting married so young.

Historians guess that her dad was probably in poor health, and he wanted to make sure his daughter was married before he was gone. This is only a guess, and he knew Henry because they were cousins, and they think that he wanted to keep the family's property together, and so that's why he allowed this marriage to happen when she was only 14 the two of them did have 12 children together. Sybil was the oldest. '

Cydni: Cause you start young. "Let's wait two years before we start a family to get to know each other." So then they started- ... when she was 16. 

Sher: Actually, she had Abigail when she was 15. 

Cydni: Okay, great. A year. 

Sher: Which is ironic because the whole point of this story is talking about Sybil, who was 16, with the main part of the story we're gonna [00:06:00] tell you. But her mother, she already had a one-year-old by the time she was 16. 

Cydni: I mean, if you consider what she learned from her mother, that you could accomplish so much by 16. 

Sher: Right. 

Cydni: You could see where this passion was instilled in her. 

Sher: Exactly. Good save, Cydni. I like it. All right. So Sybil was born in 1761 in New York, and then in April 26, 1777, this is where she is going to become famous. The British General William Tyron was ordered by General Howe to go and get the supplies the colonists were hiding in Danbury, Connecticut.

Now, the colonists thought this spot in Connecticut was a really good hiding spot, but apparently it wasn't because the British found out about it, and they decided to go and steal all of their stash. So this is just across the border from where Sybil lives. So Sybil lives in New York, but the British are going to Connecticut to steal all the supplies.

This is the area that her dad was the militia leader over. He covered that area of [00:07:00] Connecticut and New York. So the British marched to Danbury, Connecticut, and this is the part that just makes me really sad, Cydni. American loyalists joined them along the way, and this is something that I just wanna think about here for just a minute, While I'm telling you what the British and Loyalists are gonna do to the citizens of Danbury, just remember this: this is what Americans, fellow Americans, did to their neighbors

and what is so amazing to me is these Loyalists that fought actively against the Americans and stayed on the British side, the thing that gets me is Washington never went after the Loyalists. He never went after the American citizens. He left them alone, can you think of a time in history that has ever happened?

Like, even when the war was over, we had won, he didn't kick them out. They didn't do anything to them. The military didn't go around and hang them all. They just left them alone. This is what makes our revolution so different. Instead, he just forgave all of them and moved on. [00:08:00] I find that so amazing. And as you're reading history, another thing to think of is they had so much interaction with each other. You'll read about times when Loyalists were talking to Washington because they're neighbors. They all knew each other, and they had a different point of view, and Washington left them alone. It's incredible to me.

 So the British and the Loyalists got to Danbury. They went on an absolute rampage, Cydni. The colonists that were in the town, they were absolutely defenseless. they did not have enough supplies or weapons to fight back, and so they just took off running and left their town because they didn't know what else to do.

So the British ended up burning 19 homes and 22 barns and storehouses, and in those storehouses they burned provisions, clothing, and almost 1,700 tents that were all for Washington's army. And those homes they burnt down, they targeted Americans' homes that they knew supported the [00:09:00] revolution.

And then all those supplies and tents, they were also critical for Washington's army because Washington didn't have a lot of supplies anyway, and now they just destroyed all of this. So this was a huge blow for the Americans. The British absolutely ransacked the town, like even the homes that they didn't burn down, they went in and stole things out of.

They found the rum supply, and then they got totally sloshed, which actually might have helped save the city a little bit because once they got drunk, it was so unorganized and chaotic that they didn't systematically keep burning down the town like they were

so the British after they ransacked the town, started heading back to their barracks the next morning, but by this time, the Americans had time to gather, and they made the march back for the British absolutely miserable.

At a place called Ridgefield, Benedict Arnold forced the British to fight for over two hours in just that one spot. Benedict Arnold even had a horse shot out from under [00:10:00] him, and he was also nearly captured by the British. Now, the thing that's interesting is this battle at Ridgefield is where Benedict Arnold started to get a reputation of being a great American war hero.

Everyone in the colonies knew Benedict Arnold, and they knew him from being very brave and courageous on our side, which, as you know, Benedict Arnold is going to trade sides, and he is going to try to sell us out. He almost made it possible for the British to capture George Washington. That's how much he turned on us. So he now is known in our history as being the first American traitor. Well, now, the question is, how did all of the Americans find out about what was going on in Danbury, and how did they know that the British were ransacking it?

Someone had to tell the American militias in the area what was happening. So this is where the legend of Sybil begins. The earliest known document referring to this ride, , is in [00:11:00] 1854, and it's a letter from her nephew, Charles H. Ludington, asking that his aunt be recognized at a ceremony honoring revolutionary heroes.

Now, she died in 1839, so I am going to guess that Charles must have known her, and she must have been the one telling him the story. Don't you think? 

Cydni: I think so. I mean, maybe. 

Sher: Maybe, 

Cydni: right? Maybe. Okay. I think that lines up to be a myth buster,

Sher: yeah, exactly.

Cydni: Maybe. 

Sher: We'll see. 

Cydni: I 

Sher: know. See what you think by the end.

Well, moving on. Sybil's dad found out very late at night, and he needed to organize the militia and get them ready to march towards Danbury, but he needed someone to tell the militia that was spread out for miles all over the countryside. The messenger that told Henry was way too exhausted to keep going.

Plus, he didn't know the area. It was also raining, and this was over 40 miles of riding. Sybil had just turned 16, and she volunteered. So she took a [00:12:00] stick, and she's took off riding in the countryside, banging on doors and letting the militia know that the British had come into their territory, and they needed to gather.

Now, this 40 miles is twice the distance of Paul Revere's ride, and also remember, the British were obviously in the area, along with the Loyalists were going to help the British. So Sybil had to make sure she was dodging them as well.

Sybil completed this 40 miles and made it back to her house around dawn, and she was the reason that the militia was able to gather, and Henry and his militia were actually with Benedict Arnold at Ridgefield, where remember, they held the British for over two hours. Now, we know that Henry was there because Alexander Hamilton wrote Henry and said this: "I congratulate you on Danbury's expedition. The stores destroyed have been purchased at a pretty high price to the enemy." So just so you know, Americans killed and wounded over 172 [00:13:00] British, and as far as on the American side, there was somewhere between 40 and 80. We're not quite sure. 

Cydni: We never know the numbers. There could have been 12.7 million.

Sher: It seems that happens a lot to us. I don't know if that's real or if we just don't know numbers, Cydni. 

Cydni: No, we know numbers. Numbers are our thing, so that's our strongest point probably is numbers, so they didn't know numbers. How would you measure that, though? It would be impossible. 

Sher: It really would be. You're just going back looking at these old records that could've been destroyed by the British, so we don't know. 

Cydni: And you have no idea who took off running or if they actually were goners. 

Sher: Right, exactly. 

Cydni: You have 

Sher: no idea. Yeah, you don't. You have no idea. 

Cydni: For that reason, we accept the wide range of numbers.

Sher: Now, it's also reported that George Washington personally wrote to thank Colonel Ledington and what he did to help at Ridgefield. It's also reported that a famous quote happened at Ridgefield from an American general named General David [00:14:00] Wooster.

He was wounded at Ridgefield, and a few days later passed away, but here were his last words: "I am dying, but with a strong hope and persuasion that my country will gain her independence."

Now, the reason I'm bringing this up is because I want us all to understand that these people were all in. They were all in. They wanted a free country for their kids and grandkids. He obviously knew he wasn't ever gonna see it, but this is what he wanted for us, and I just get such hope in them that they wanted this so badly that they were willing and able to defeat the most powerful country in the world at the time.

Okay, now back to Sybil. So Sybil, she does this ride. It's kinda just a little forgotten footnote in history. Seven years later, she's gonna get married to Edmund Ogden, and Edmund had fought in the American Revolution, and unfortunately, he's gonna die very young of yellow fever, and she was left a widow with her son Henry.

her [00:15:00] husband owned an inn, and Sybil is going to continue running and operating that inn, and then eventually she's going to buy a tavern, and she's gonna run both of those businesses. And this is how Sybil paid for her son to go to college, and her son Henry became a lawyer.

She eventually is gonna live with her son and his family, and regardless of anything else, I do have to say this. She was a very strong and impressive woman because in this time period, she ran those two businesses by herself and got her only son through school, which is incredible.

Now, when Sybil died, she was actually buried by her father, not by her husband, and the records are mixed of why they think this happened. Some people think it's because her husband was cremated, and so they laid her to rest by her dad, and some people think it's because of where she died.

It was the location of it. It was [00:16:00] closer to bury her next to her dad than it was to her husband. Either way, she's buried next to her parents and not her husband. Now, Cydni, I wanna tell you something. When I was teaching history, I would give my students a choice of people to research and then they could write about. So I had them in categories. So I had soldiers, sailors. I had a category for women, like founding mothers, founding fathers, and they could pick from these categories.

And Sybil was one of the choices under the founding mothers and women, right? And so my students would look her up, and they would do research about her. And then, Cydni, as we were doing research about this, go ahead and tell me what you brought up to me. 

Cydni: Yeah, just in a nice little text I said, "Hey you established history teacher- how do you feel about her story being a myth and the evidence proving..." To most people, they would say that as inspiring as the story is, the [00:17:00] evidence does conclude the story's not accurate. How do you feel about that? 

Sher: Yeah, it makes me feel like I was teaching fake news to my students, so I apologize to my students.

Cydni: Maybe, 'cause just like we don't know the numbers to a lot of things- ... I don't think we know the truth. Things that we see in our lifetime, that stuff gets twisted so quickly And if someone reads headlines from 2020, they're going to feel different about it than maybe we do, don't you think?

Sher: I do. 

Cydni: So how do you know what is true, and how do you know what isn't? 

Sher: I have no idea. I'm just hoping her nephew told the truth. Yeah. But then I think, why didn't her son say something? 

Cydni: Why didn't she say something? 

Sher: Well, she did. If she said something to her nephew and 

Cydni: her family. Why didn't she write something? So let me tell you, since your research- ... is rooted in beauty. Mine is rooted in myth, and so, from what I've learned. Different nonprofit groups who study history, and [00:18:00] unfortunately several of those who have good intentions also concluded that it's a myth.

 But one of the reasons, the biggest reasons outside that nobody could agree on what her horse's name actually was- ... that was one of the things that threw people off. Another was that she was applying for pension, and she wrote out her full life history in detail and never once stated anything about that ride.

That is the number one that makes people feel that way. But when you learn about her and her personality, she doesn't seem to me like someone who would be much of a bragger, more factual I feel. 

Sher: Yeah, and also with that, it was her husband, she was trying to get her husband's pension, right? Mm-hmm.

But if you think if she just rode one night by herself as a teenage girl, why would she get a pension for that? 

Cydni: Yeah, I feel the same way actually. I wondered if it is for her husband she doesn't seem like the type of woman, let's say, that I am- ... that if I was supposed to tell about Ben's life, it would be [00:19:00] 90% about me.

She doesn't have that same energy. She seemed like she was more business-minded, otherwise she wouldn't be able to run the two businesses at that time so to me, she seems more factual what is helpful, not like, by the way, I would just like to say- ... that one night when I was 16, my mom was like, 'You either get married, 'cause you're two years behind- or you go out and ride your horse Star.'" So she seems just really factual to me. 

Sher: Yeah, I agree. 

Cydni: But a lot of people said because the nephew wrote 40 years after her passing, that it seemed he was using the story and elaborating on it to get attention. And that if there was a truth behind the story, that a lot of the women of the revolution, they would go on to speak and inspire or write a book or pamphlets or anything, and she didn't. She did nothing of it. So that made people feel like maybe the story wasn't true. Why didn't she ever talk about it?

Maybe she was just a humble woman- ... who [00:20:00] just got done what needed to get done and didn't think much of it.

Didn't understand the significance of it. Mm-hmm. Maybe some people find that at the time they needed to inspire the men to work harder. So Some say they used Sybil's story to degrade the men. To be like, "You know what? The 16-year-old not man did- ... a woman. She was a girl. You know what she did?

And you can't step up and do what we need you to do?" So some people find her story to be used for propaganda. 

Sher: I can totally see that. 

Cydni: in all of this, I really did ask myself, how do you know what the truth is? Because I can see it both ways. A lot of what people stated of evidence to prove it didn't happen seems to stand pretty strong, but there's also evidence that it could be true 

And so here's where this has led me. The lesson for myself in Sybil's story is there's no way we're going to know the numbers. There's no way we're going to know what the true actual history is if we weren't there, [00:21:00] which is why I feel strongly we must have the spirit with us. We have to. That's my lesson from this for myself, is that we live in a time where you don't know what the truth is.

We are going to be fed so much information, and we're going to be fed two sides to a story that stand to make sense. And it is our duty and obligation to do what we need to do to have the spirit with us. It is the only way we will survive. Maybe her story doesn't matter to be true or not. Maybe there's just lessons there for us to be inspired by.

Because one gentleman, he said, "What if her story's not true? What then?" Maybe her name, Sybil, is to represent the many unknown men and women who sacrificed for us during that time, who sacrificed for future generations. Men and women, we will never know their name. Men and women who we have proof exist, like Mercy Otis Warren, who did so much, and I did not know her name until [00:22:00] this last month.

Maybe Sybil's story is to represent these people, and maybe it's to inspire us to spend time knowing people who actually have accomplished wonderful things and be inspired by them so I liked that idea from the gentleman that maybe her story is to represent all of these men and women who have done so much, and all these men and women today who really do care and who are trying to do so much, like Lori from Jazzercise. Like her 

Sher: Just trying to make the world better every day. And we're not gonna know all their names, but I do wanna put some numbers since we're so good at math, Cydni. , I do wanna give you some numbers about this time period, though, to put it in perspective. Because we will never know all of these people's names necessarily.

These are just all unsung heroes that died for us. So during the American Revolution, there were approximately 6,824 killed in battle. There were 10,000 that died from diseases. There were [00:23:00] 8,500 that died in British prisons. Cydni, that's more than were killed in the battles. 

Cydni: The conditions had to have been wretched. 

Sher: Awful. Yeah, if you want some light reading, go ahead and look at British prison ships. They're nasty.

All right. Also, there were 8,445 that were wounded. There were 18,152 that were captured. 130,000 died from the smallpox epidemic that was going around during that time period, and that brings a total of military personnel that died to about 25,000. Now, to put that in perspective, during that time period, that's approximately 1 in every 20 fighting-age man died.

That is equivalent to about 3 million Americans today. Isn't that crazy? 

Cydni: That is a wild perspective. 

Sher: Right? And then I'm gonna keep adding here. The per capita income during the American Revolution [00:24:00] dropped 46%. That's nearly identical to the Great Depression. There were mass bankruptcies all across the colonies.

Thousands of people lost their farms and homes to foreclosure and unpaid taxes, and many people landed in debtor's prison, where death was super common. And the continental dollar was really nothing. It was just worthless, and so people had their savings completely wiped out Veterans who had fought in the American Revolution came home to lose their farms, and our national debt went to 77 million, which is about 2.87 billion in today's dollars, and all of this money was owed mainly to France and Spain.

So here's the deal. They fought in a war for eight years, and our economy did not recover until the Constitution was established in 1787. So the war started in 1775, and our Constitution was signed in [00:25:00] 1787, and that is how long of a hit we took with our economy. the American Revolution was not a simple and easy war.

These are men and women most of them we don't know. They were just everyday men and women like us that sacrificed everything for their children, for us. The least we can do is learn about them and learn about this country and learn about the Declaration and the Constitution that they signed to get this country going.

If we do that, then we have a chance of improving what they started ' cause again, they wrote in the Constitution, "In order to form a more perfect union." We're not perfect yet. We're still working at it, and we can take what they began, and we can continue to build on it. That's what I hope we can do. 

Cydni: As a reminder, the reason we are going in the direction with the podcast episodes is to celebrate the 250th-year anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of [00:26:00] Independence We're hoping as we study on the people , that we will be able to have the love for the freedom and the respect that it deserves so that we can be prepared to hold a fast July 5th for our religious freedom.

So with that, we challenge you this week to take Jazzercise, make yourself some nachos with Velveeta cheese, and put forth effort in learning about people from history. Take this challenge seriously because as we've studied, I have discovered several unsung heroes who have incredible stories. We decided that we would add an extra episode on these unsung heroes, and we're gonna talk about them next week. Find some on your own. It will change your perspective, and it will root in your heart a love for the people who have built America and who have sacrificed for it.

Sher: This brings us to our final thoughts. Sybil Ludington may or may not have made that ride. History can't tell us for certain, [00:27:00] but here's what we do know. She was a real woman who lived a very hard life. She buried a husband too young, ran an inn and a tavern alone, and put her son through law school. The American Revolution was not simple, clean, and glorious war.

It was brutal, it was costly, and it broke people. Men and women sacrificed everything to hand us something better. The least we can do is learn their stories, honor them, and build on what they started. They held up their end of the deal, and now it's our turn to pass that freedom on to the next generation. This is our prayer. 

Cydni: From Cydni and Sher. We should do an episode with rum, like we drink [00:28:00] rum and then record it, just in honor of history. 

Sher: That's a really good idea, Cydni. 

Cydni: Thanks. Do you know what I mean? 

Sher: No. 

Cydni: Okay. 

Sher: You lost me- 

Cydni: Just I w- I- ... with 

Sher: the numbers.

Cydni: Just scratch all that. Sorry for me trying to add math to anything. I 

Sher: know, me too. Thanks for joining us. 

Cydni: We're so glad you're here.