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APART FROM THE DELEGATION of statesmen who reportedly visited Betsy Ross at her upholstery shop in the spring of 1776 to ask her to sew a banner to represent the unification of the thirteen colonies, history tells us virtually nothing of Betsy Ross’s life between the death of her first husband John Ross in January 1776 and her subsequent marriage to privateer Joseph Ashburn in June 1777. It is during this gap in Betsy’s life that I chose to set The Accidental Spy. In my fictional story Betsy Ross is drawn into Philadelphia’s dangerous underworld of Revolutionary war spies and double agents. She interacts with many real historical figures: among them her siblings . . .Sarah, Rachel and George. Historians differ as to how many siblings Betsy actually had, possibly because so many died as children, and whether Betsy was the seventh or eighth child born to Rebecca and Samuel Griscom. I also found discrepancies regarding the birth dates of some of her siblings, including George and Rachel, so in my fictional tale, it is possible that their ages may be off by as much as a year.
After Betsy eloped to marry John Ross in 1773, the Quaker community and Betsy’s parents did “shun” her for marrying outside the Quaker faith but history is unclear if they continued to shun her following John’s death. For the purposes of my fictional story, I chose to have Betsy continue to live at the home on Mulberry Street, where she may or may not have lived with John Ross while they were married and to have her parents continue to shun her, since throughout the remainder of her life, Betsy never returned to the Quaker fold. After being given several opportunities to seek forgiveness for marrying outside her faith, Betsy failed on numerous occasions to appear before the Quaker Women’s Committee, who eventually issued a formal statement declaring that they could “no longer esteem her a Member in Fellowship with us.” Thereafter Betsy Ross was known as a Free Quaker. History substantiates that Betsy did join a group called Fighting Quakers and that many members were, like her, known as Free Quakers.
Whether or not the house at 239 Arch Street (in 1776 also known as Mulberry Street) in Philadelphia, now a museum and memorial to Betsy Ross is, in fact, the actual house where Betsy lived in 1776 and conducted her upholstery business is also in dispute. According to Marla Miller, author of a scholarly work titled Betsy Ross and the Making of America, no official records exist citing precisely where Betsy Ross lived from 1775 to 1780, which encompasses the time period in which I set Accidental Spy. The layout and number of rooms in Betsy’s home, in my story, may or may not be correct. We have no way of knowing today exactly how many rooms were in the house or how they may have been arranged in 1776.
History does not substantiate that Sarah’s husband William Donaldson ever served with the rebel army, but that he was instead a shipbuilder. In 1776, Sarah and William were already the parents of a little girl named Margaret. As did Betsy when she married John, Sarah had also eloped with William but following a “satisfactory report” from the Friends committee who handled her case, she was readmitted as a member in good standing to the Quaker community, known as the Society of Friends. I discovered that not all Quakers used “thee” and “thy” in their everyday speech; for some these were affectionate terms used only toward family members. Also many Quakers did not celebrate Christmas, as they viewed every day as holy, therefore one day was no different from another. History tells us that some Quaker families exchanged gifts at Christmas while others did not.
Despite the exceptions cited above, I made every effort to remain true to substantiated historical fact in my story both in regard to Betsy’s life and to the events of the Revolutionary war in 1776. History confirms that after the British swarmed into New York, George Washington did become desperate for reliable intelligence and did issue a plea for civilians to act as informants, i.e. spies. An especially interesting and entertaining book on this subject, George Washington, Spymaster by Thomas B. Allen cites an incident where Washington discovered that one of his own bodyguards, Thomas Hickey, was a British spy and at a hastily convened trial (court martial) over which Washington presided, he found Hickey guilty of “mutiny, sedition, and treachery” and ordered him hanged on the spot as “a warning to every soldier in the army.”
During the war years, it was common for Patriot-owned newspapers to not report negative news about General Washington, or his battle loses. However, as a way for my characters (and readers) to stay abreast of the war, I chose to let them read about all war battles, whether victorious or not, in their local newspapers.
Early in the Revolutionary war the Continental Congress did grant privateers permission to capture, board, and plunder British ships without fear of penalty or punishment. Also true is that after Washington and his Continental army reached Pennsylvania in early December 1776, he at once issued an order for all ships of a size within a specified distance from Philadelphia be destroyed in order to prevent the British from crossing the Delaware River in pursuit of the rebels.
The second Continental Congress did meet in Philadelphia in 1775-76 and Congressman John Nixon did read aloud the newly penned document called The Declaration of Independence from the steps of the State House on Chestnut Street. The original document used the word unalienable as opposed to inalienable which we use today. However in 1776, the public reading of the declaration and parade were actually held on July 8, as opposed to July 4, the day later designated, and which we now commemorate, as Independence Day.
In my research, I came across many references to the Secret Committees of Correspondence. The first Secret Committee of Correspondence group was organized in Massachusetts by Sam Adams as a way of quickly spreading war information throughout the colonies. It was similar enough to the Sons of Liberty that the two groups were often mistaken for one another. Apart from the historical references I make in my story in regard to the Revolutionary war, Betsy Ross: Accidental Spy is to be regarded as a purely fictional tale. No historical records anywhere suggest that Betsy Ross ever engaged in covert spy activity. At the time of her death, Elizabeth Ross Ashburn Claypoole, AKA Betsy Ross, was an ordinary Philadelphia citizen whose death notice in the Pennsylvanian listed only her name, age, and date of death . . . the afternoon of January 30, 1836. She was 84. No one knew then that Betsy Ross was destined to become an American icon.
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FASCINATING FACTS ABOUT Early Philadelphia . . . Did you know?
The first public fire truck in Philadelphia was purchased in 1719; and America’s first medical school opened in Philadelphia in 1765. In July 1775, Benjamin Franklin established the first American Post Office in Philadelphia and was named the first Postmaster General.
During the Revolutionary war, a British soldier wore the same uniform winter and summer. It was made of heavy wool with a stiff leather collar (so he’d stand up straight) and his white knee breeches were so tight that they had to be put on wet. When they dried, they became even tighter. His supply pack weighted over 135 pounds and had to be worn on his back even into battle. British soldiers were required to wear their hair in a tight ponytail with a curl over each ear, the curls held in place by a smelly mixture of powder and grease, which caused flies to swarm around the soldier’s face. The brass helmets had no brim and were of no use in the sun. It was thought that the more uncomfortable a soldier was, the madder he would be and the more aggressively he would fight the hated rebels.
As punishment for treason against the British, when a rebel traitor was caught, he was hanged until nearly dead; then the soldiers cut him down, cut out his intestines and set them on fire as the half-dead traitor watched. Then the poor wretch was beheaded; his body cut into four pieces and put on a spike for all to see.
Patriots, or rebels, referred to the enemy as Loyalists or Tories, an Irish word meaning bandit or thief. Patriots declared that a “Tory was a thing whose head is in England, whose body is in America, and whose neck needs stretching.” Sadly, Patriots were also known to beat their hated Loyalist brothers (the enemy) then tar and feather him.
Some say the origins of the tune to the song we know today as Yankee Doodle Dandy dates back to fifteenth-century Holland where it was sung, with different words, of course, at harvest time. In the sixteenth century, the British changed the lyrics to be derisive towards Oliver Cromwell. New lyrics penned by the British during the American Revolutionary war poked fun at the colonists who the British saw as poorly educated farmers who wore ill-fitting clothes and had no class. However, Rebels quickly took up the tune, wrote their own lyrics and marched off to battle singing: “Yankee Doodle is the tune Americans delight in. It suits for feasts, it suits for fun. And just as well for fighting.”
In 1777 when the British occupied Philadelphia, General Cornwallis needed to determine the number of vacant houses that were available to quarter his men. A door-to-door, house-to-house count was conducted and when completed, revealed there were 5,470 houses in the entire city, 587 of them unoccupied, with 287 being stores. The total population was determined to be 21,767 citizens, exclusive of the British soldiers. This count became the first census taken in America.
In 1783 at the close of the Revolutionary War, Washington presented an award to three soldiers whom he felt had acted with outstanding courage. The award consisted of a badge made of purple cloth. Washington called it the Badge of Military Merit. The honor was virtually forgotten until 1932, when upon the 200th anniversary of George Washington’s birth, the badge reemerged as the “Purple Heart” and was awarded to soldiers who had been wounded in action.
During the revolutionary war period, the towering mounds that women created with their hair could reach as high as three feet. After decorating the mound with ribbons, flowers or artificial birds, women coated their hair, or wigs, with animal fat mixed with cinnamon and cloves, then the whole thing was dusted with flour to make it white—white hair being a sign of wisdom. At fancy-dress balls, the air often looked like it was snowing due to the profusion of flour, or powder, blowing off everyone’s heads, men included, as they danced. Usually a special room was set aside where the ladies could go to have their hair re-powdered, giving rise to the phrase “I’m going to the powder room.”
As men and women lost their teeth due to age, or decay, they often placed cork balls, called plumpers, into their cheeks to keep them from looking caved-in.
The red rouge that women used on their cheeks and lips was made from crushed cochineal bugs, which were red. The substance was also used to dye the red coats worn by British soldiers.
Women’s dancing slippers were often made from silk, which generally did not last beyond one night of dancing at a ball. A really wealthy woman’s dancing shoes were made from dog skin; therefore in those days the expression “putting on the dog” came to mean one was preparing for a lively evening of dancing.
A popular and best-selling book of the 1700s was a book on how to dance, which showed the steps for 918 different dances!
During this period, forty newspapers were published in the thirteen colonies, six of them owned, run and edited by women.
In colonial days, a person convicted of a crime had the inside top of his or her thumb of his right hand branded with a hot iron . . .T for thief, M for murderer and so on. A person caught and convicted a second time was sentenced to the gallows. The present day custom in a court of law of a person being asked to “raise your right hand” dates back to colonial times when as soon as a person was brought before a judge, he asked them to raise their right hand so he could look at their thumb to determine if they had ever before been convicted of a crime.
There were a good many slaves in Philadelphia during the revolution. When a slave was asked how long he/she worked each day, the answer would likely be “from can to can’t” meaning from when I “can” see daylight to when I “can’t” i.e. from sunrise to sunset.
We’ve all heard of the famous revolutionary woman named Molly Pitcher, right? What we may not know is that her real name was Mary Ludwig Hays. On a sweltering June day in 1778 it was so hot that soldiers on the battlefield began passing out from the heat. Mary, whose nickname was, indeed, Molly; grabbed an old pitcher and began running between the battlefield and a nearby stream to bring water to the men. However, that day the thirsty men merely called out: “Molly! Pitcher!” Thereafter the name stuck. In truth, there were hundreds of “Molly Pitchers” during the revolutionary war and these brave women’s efforts to bring the soldiers water no doubt saved many a young man’s life. God bless our American Patriots everywhere and God bless America, the greatest country in the world!