Sybil Ludington Travel Bug KEY

To hang out near New Jersey so folks can use it to get into the A Hide for My 3rd Son cache.

This travel bug is the KEY to opening the A Hide for My 3^rd Son cache.  Please keep it in the general New Jersey area so that folks can find it to open up that cache.

“My Aunt Sybil," rode, “on horseback in the dead of night...through a Country infested with Cowboys and Skinners to inform Gen’l Putnam.” ~ Charles H. Ludington, 1854

In the lead up to the Bicentennial in 1976, many old tales began to resurface that had been all but forgotten.  This seems odd to us today, but even Paul Revere's famous ride (despite the poem) was almost forgotten until that time.  Paul Revere didn't ride alone that night, and he wasn't the only one to make a daring ride during the War for Independence.

The legend goes that, on April 26, 1777, 16 year old Sybil Ludington received word that the British were to attack Danbury, Connecticut.  Her father, a Colonal in the militia, had her ride forty miles in a driving rainstorm to raise the alarm.  The British took Danbury, but the rallied forces met the British at nearby Ridgeway and drove them back to their ships.

There are direct sources about Sybil's ride, but then again, there are precious few sources about so many things from this time period for so many common folk who helped in ways big and small to win independence for the United States.  We do know she married a veteran of the war, single-handedly raised her son after her husband died (he went on to become a sucessful lawyer and then a state legislator).  She applied for and was denied a pension for her husband's service... because she couldn't find a copy of their marriage license.  

Her role was first mentioned in an 1880 book that cited no sources, and historians have doubted whether this event ever happened.  However, recently a 1854 letter from her nephew was discovered asking local authorities to recognize his aunt's ride during the war... 

Like Paul Revere definately did not yell "the British are coming!", Ludington was very unlikely to have said "Let me! I can ride as well as any man" and "The British are coming! Fight, fight!". But as more evidence of her heroics has been uncovered, her place in history has become secure.

In 1961, a statue was unveiled by the Daughters of the American Revolution comemorating the ride and catipulting Ludington into the national conscieness.   Since then, there was a postage stamp, several books, historical markers, an annual run that follows the possible route of the ride, and even a 2010 movie.