Betsy Ross and the Making of America

Starred review from March 15, 2010
Many Americans accept as true the story of Betsy Ross's role in creating the first American flag. Many modern historians believe the tale is apocryphal. But Miller, an associate professor of history at UMass-Amherst, says the story perpetuated by Ross's family is “neither altogether right nor altogether wrong.” There is no doubt, Miller says, that the skilled needlewoman was one of Philadelphia's most important flag makers from the Revolution through the War of 1812, and that Ross is important because she offers a unique lens on Philadelphia in that era. Ross's uncles were deeply involved in the Stamp Act protests; a Quaker who left her church to marry her first husband, herself a supporter of the colonies' rebellion, Ross was twice widowed by the Revolution and was married again to a war veteran. The lives of her family members were claimed by the yellow fever epidemic brought by refugees from revolutionary Haiti who flooded Philadelphia in 1793; her artisanal family's prosperity was sacrificed to war and political upheaval. This first-rate biography of Ross (1752–1836) is authoritative and engrossing and goes a long way toward recovering the history of early American women and work. 8 pages of b&w photos.