Ruth Graham: The Real Betsy Ross was a Hard-Nosed, Snuff-Loving Businesswoman
Any second grader can tell you that early in the American Revolution, a Philadelphia woman named Betsy Ross made an American flag. She often appears in this flag creation account as a demure seamstress simply eager to help out the Revolutionary effort in any way she could. This is the narrative you'll hear in countless children's books—think Betsy Ross and the Silver Thimble. But what books like Silver Thimble won't tell you is that she also accepted a hefty £14 payment (roughly $2,000 in today's dollars) for that "first" flag. Or that she was married three times. The Betsy Ross that emerges in recent research is no sweet seamstress, but rather a tough businesswoman fond of dark snuff and storytelling.
Until now, Betsy Ross hasn't received much serious attention by historians, who have treated her story something like young Washington and his cherry tree. That's starting to change. April saw the publication of the first scholarly biography of Ross, historian Marla Miller's affectionate, meticulously researched Betsy Ross and the Making of America. In October, an exhibit called "Betsy Ross: The Life Behind the Legend" will open at Winterthur, a Delaware museum focused on historical Americana. So how did a defense contractor rejected by the Quaker church become the milquetoast matron of the story told to schoolchildren? It was a combination of Ross's own self-mythologizing, her descendants' familial boosterism, patriotic interest in the U.S. centennial, and the tale's alignment with notions of proper 19th-century femininity....
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Until now, Betsy Ross hasn't received much serious attention by historians, who have treated her story something like young Washington and his cherry tree. That's starting to change. April saw the publication of the first scholarly biography of Ross, historian Marla Miller's affectionate, meticulously researched Betsy Ross and the Making of America. In October, an exhibit called "Betsy Ross: The Life Behind the Legend" will open at Winterthur, a Delaware museum focused on historical Americana. So how did a defense contractor rejected by the Quaker church become the milquetoast matron of the story told to schoolchildren? It was a combination of Ross's own self-mythologizing, her descendants' familial boosterism, patriotic interest in the U.S. centennial, and the tale's alignment with notions of proper 19th-century femininity....