## The Failed First Attempt: Timothy Thayer and the Middleborough Exposure
Deborah Sampson did not simply decide to enlist and succeed. The record that has survived includes an earlier attempt that failed, and the evidence for that earlier attempt is more textured than previously understood.
In early 1782, she enlisted in Middleborough under a male name, collected an enlistment bonus, and was subsequently exposed. The name associated with this failed attempt is Timothy Thayer. A witness apparently recognized her, the deception was uncovered, and she did not report for muster. The enlistment bonus was returned. The Baptist church in Middleborough, records suggest, withdrew its fellowship from her — a punishment that represented significant social and community consequences.
This earlier attempt is documented in sources beyond her own later accounts, which matters because Deborah Sampson’s story has been substantially mediated through a biography produced fourteen years after her service, a biography that the Museum of the American Revolution explicitly cautions contains fabricated and embellished elements.
Abner Weston was a corporal in the Massachusetts militia whose diary surfaced at a New Hampshire antiques show around 2019 and was acquired by Philip Mead of the Museum of the American Revolution. Weston’s diary, a contemporary account written by someone who had no particular reason to dramatize Deborah Sampson’s life, includes an entry dated January 23, 1782, describing a woman who hired herself to Israel Wood and was found out. Weston’s account places this event in January 1782, after the Yorktown surrender, which has significance for how the full arc of her service should be understood.