Local Profile

A Tour Guide Who Has Done His Homework:
On Saturday morning September 26 Vincent Dacquino, local history educator, will lead a tour group along the route of Sybil Ludington’s legendary 1777 ride. Dacquino will offer a “dramatic rendition” of the Revolutionary War episode in which a 16-year-old farm girl rode forty miles on horseback in the dark of night (further than Paul Revere, as some point out) to help Colonel Henry Ludington (her father) summon the militia. The emergency that April night was a mission to rescue Danbury, under attack by British troops.
It is difficult to imagine a more qualified tour guide in this case. In addition to writing several other local histories and children’s books, Mr. Dacquino is the author of the definitive biography of Sybil Ludington (Sybil Ludington: The Call to Arms, 2000) in which he corrects previous errors about her life after the war and provides a scholarly guide for tracing the earliest telling of Sybil’s ride.
The Saturday tour is from 10 a.m. -12:30 p.m. and begins at the Mahopac Public Library. If space is available, a check for the tour fee of $20 per adult, $10 per child (including t-shirt) may be made payable to IHARE (the Institute of History, Archaeology and Education).
P.Houser