Betsy Ross and the Making of America

Flagmaker Betsy Ross is a major figure in the Revolutionary War, thanks to her family's efforts to preserve her story about her role in the American flag's design. Marla Miller researched the legend and the time in an effort to find out the real story of Betsy Ross. Dana Green reads Miller's book with the tone of an enthusiastic professor, concentrating on the facts as she discusses Ross's life and the many aspects of early American life it touched on. These include Quaker marriages, math in schools, and the upholstery business. The passage of time leaves much of Ross's life to speculation. Still, the book presents an interesting portrait of her era. J.A.S. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

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.