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Heroes from History People Really Don’t Appreciate Enough

Khalid Elhassan November 10, 2020 32 min

William Colby - William J. Donovan — William Colby (oak leaves on cap) with OSS personnel and Norwegian Resistance members in Norway. Special Operations

19. Paul Revere is a Well-Known Hero, But the Young Girl Who Outrode Him Has Been Largely Forgotten

The midnight ride of Paul Revere. Smithsonian Magazine

American Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere is famous for his 18-mile midnight ride in April, 1775, to alert the colonial militia of the approaching British. The event was dramatized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in Paul Revere’s Ride. In 1777, Sybil Ludington (1761 – 1839) made a 40-mile midnight ride to warn the colonial militia of approaching British troops. That was more than twice as far as Paul Revere’s ride, and she did it when she was only sixteen.

Sybil Ludington was born in Fredericksburg (now Ludington), the eldest of a large family of 12 children. Her father, Henry Ludington, was a New York militia officer, and later an aide to George Washington. On the night of April 26^th, 1777, word reached the Ludington household that New York’s governor, general William Tryon, was about to attack nearby Danbury, Connecticut, where supplies and munitions for the region’s militia were stored.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.