Sybil Ludington, the Female Paul Revere

The first stanza of the poem "Sybil Ludington's Ride" (1940), by American poet Berton Braley, reads:

     Listen, my children, and you shall hear
     Of a lovely feminine Paul Revere
     Who rode an equally famous ride
     Through a different part of the countryside,
     Where Sybil Ludington's name recalls
     A ride as daring as that of Paul's.

On this day in 1777, according to a widely accepted account from the American Revolutionary War, 16-year-old Sybil Ludington (1761-1839), the eldest child of Colonel Henry Ludington, a militia commander in Dutchess County, New York, rode her horse into the night to alert her father's men of the approach of British regular troops who were sacking Danbury, Connecticut. (Ludington, sometimes referred to as "the female Paul Revere," was said to have covered forty miles, more than twice the distance of the Boston silversmith's ride.)

Statue of Sybil Ludington in Carmel, New York

by Anna Hyatt Huntington