![]() ![]() But its best sections, which reveal how Ross came to know the men who ran the Revolution and later the country, are intelligent and lively. The book is at least 50 pages too long and overstuffed with minutiae about minor characters we forget five pages later. “The flag, like the Revolution it represents, was the work of many hands,” she writes. No record exists of Washington’s visit to Ross’ parlor, for example, so Miller sidesteps the question of her actual role in creating the first Stars and Stripes. The result is a historical account that’s brilliantly researched but feels somewhat like a bait-and-switch, as much about the making of America as about Ross. Miller does her best to surmount this obstacle by relying on other archival documents-newspaper ads, household receipts, meeting minutes and the like- and by writing about many, many other people who surrounded Ross, even relatives of relatives. Miller explains, Ross’ descendants “saw no need to preserve the letters she wrote, the shop accounts she kept, or any other record of her thoughts or actions….Her interior life is not preserved in journals or letters.” Most of us still learn the legend that George Washington visited her Philadelphia shop and asked her to create a flag for the budding nation.īut as Marla R. How can this be the first scholarly biography of Betsy Ross? Surely she is one of the most famous women of the American Revolution. American History Book Review: Betsy Ross and the Making of America Close ![]()
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