She is described in various sources as the first woman to receive a military pension from the federal government for Revolutionary War service. This claim should be stated with the care that the historical record warrants: she is the first woman known to have received such a pension, which is a claim that depends on the completeness of the records rather than absolute certainty.
The pension, at four dollars a month, was not sufficient to resolve the Gannett household’s financial difficulties. Her disability — the leg that had never healed, the chronic effects of the wound sustained in 1782 — limited her ability to supplement the family income through labor. She continued to petition.
In 1806, she wrote to Paul Revere asking to borrow ten dollars. The letter exists. It is a document of persistent financial difficulty in a household that the federal pension had not made comfortable.
## Subsequent Petitions: 1809 and 1816
The four-dollar monthly pension was not the end of the pension story. Deborah Sampson Gannett continued to navigate the bureaucratic processes of the early American government.
In 1809, she petitioned Congress to make the pension retroactive to 1783 — to the date of her discharge — which would have represented back-payment for the years of recognition denied. Congress refused.
In 1816, she petitioned again, seeking an increase. Congress approved the increase, raising the pension to $6.40 a month. The additional $2.40 was not a dramatic improvement in the household’s circumstances, but it represented an ongoing recognition, however modest, of the government’s obligation to her.