The Weston diary is different. It is a contemporary document written by a militiaman who had no particular reason to misrepresent what he observed or heard. His account of a woman enlisting in Middleborough in January 1782, being found out, and having the enlistment reversed was not written to build a pension case or to sell a popular biography. It was written as a record of events the author observed.
The diary corroborates the earlier enlistment attempt, provides a contemporary date for it, and adds a detail — the arrangement with Israel Wood — that is not present in most later accounts. It also, by placing the event after Yorktown, effectively contradicts any claim that she served in the 1781 campaign.
Philip Mead and the Museum of the American Revolution have described the diary as an important source that “provides new details” about her story. That framing is accurate. It adds a layer of contemporary verification that was previously absent from the record.
## Benjamin Gannett and the Household After the War
Benjamin Gannett does not emerge as a fully documented figure in the historical record about his wife. He was a farmer. He appears in accounts primarily as the husband of Deborah Sampson, and the records that involve him most directly are the pension records — both the petition on her behalf and the posthumous petition for survivor benefits.
Their marriage in April 1785 followed a period of approximately eighteen months after her discharge. The timing suggests she returned to Massachusetts, reestablished herself in her community, and then chose to marry — but the interior of that period, her thinking about her options, her relationship with the Middleborough church that had disciplined her, and her decision to settle in Sharon rather than elsewhere are not documented with specificity.