Let Us Now Praise Famous (Wo)Men

“Are you Betsy Ross?” she asked, peering up hopefully. 

Unfortunately for her, I was hungry. “Nope.” That was not the answer she wanted. 

“Are you George Washington’s wife?” She tried again.

“Heck no,” I replied. “I’m representing Anne Pearson Sparks, a milliner who lived here on Second Street, where the Bleu Martini is now.” 

“I didn’t realize people who had stores like that could dress like that,” she replied, still dissatisfied. 

What do you do with that? My first impulse was to ask, “Why do you think that?” but I went with explaining how successful milliners and importers could be, and how that allowed them to wear pretty clothes. It wasn’t the best way to go, but I didn’t want to prolong a conversation that didn’t seem to have much going for it. The lesson here? Never interpret when you are hungry, and eat away from the public if you can.

Not Betsy Ross.

I get a fair amount of “Are you Betsy Ross?” when I’m dressed in Philadelphia, and I always hate it even though I should expect it. I know I should get over it; people are connecting where they are, with their knowledge of the past. None of them should know about Ann King or Rebecca Flower Young. Betsy’s had good PR, like squirrels, and her house is still there. She’s an icon. “Are you George Washington’s wife?” was new, and didn’t even manage to recall Martha’s own name.

I walked away from that conversation wondering why people were so hung up on portraying a well-known historical figure. Is it simple self-reinforcement, where because someone is known they’re shown, and because they’re shown, they’re known, repeat ad nauseam? Why is being someone ordinary so disruptive? Unsettling? Disappointing? Is it because visitors want the thrill of meeting a celebrity ghost? I find that sad, but I’ve been interested in the everyday for decades.

There are more of us than there are of them, whether you mean billionaires, celebrities, or politicians. We are ordinary, common, everyday. We make the world go ‘round. 

Representing us has always been important to me, whether the “us” comprises women with the Army, servants, tailoresses, milliners, apothecaries, or tavern keepers. More names survive than you’d think, and they’re findable in newspapers, tax records, and manuscript collections, though it takes some reading between the lines and across the grain. I suppose it’s odd, digging through records looking for the barely seen and forgotten people, trying to resurrect their lives. Wouldn’t it make more sense to be someone recognizable, like Betsy Ross? 

We lose depth and dimension when we stick to the recognizable and already known. We risk making NPCs out of the lesser-known and unknown, ascribing action only to a few, ignoring that it takes a movement of many to effect large shifts in history. In our own moment, that kind of thinking strips us of agency, leaves us waiting for a hero. But aren’t we all the heroes of our own stories, the films we watch from inside our skulls, narrated by ourselves with the occasional guest appearance by David Attenborough when we go to the zoo, or see a rare bird, or a whale? Your soundtrack may vary; mine was Blitzkrieg Bop on July 4.

Interiority is becoming a “thing” in the eighteenth century, individual identities are forming in new ways as people become more modern, and less medieval or early modern. The Reformation and the Enlightenment changed the world. People began to perceive and understand the world and their place in it differently, to question predestination, to ponder the “natural rights of man.” You don’t get the American Revolution, or the Haitian Revolution, or the French Revolution, without the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and all the people those movements and ideas affected.

Think of a battlefield. It’s commonplace to say, “Washington won the Battle of Trenton,” or perhaps “the Continental Army under Washington won the Battle of Trenton,” eliding the private soldiers who made up the vast majority of combatants in the first case, and anonymizing them as a group in the second. It’s impractical to list those individuals, but they surely experienced that battle alone, individually, even as they fought together. Each participant understood it individually. If it is reasonable to represent a private soldier, many of whom we have names and brief biographies for, then why not a private citizen for whom we can find name, occupation, address, home insurance policy, business receipts, and letters?

Why not be Anne Pearson Sparks, or Rebecca Flower Young, instead of Betsy Ross? Rebecca Flower Young, an Army contractor making “colours” and drum cases and other goods for the Continental Army. Women also made shirts, and they probably made bed ticks, stitched tents, haversacks, knapsacks, and munitions as contractors and subcontractors. If I’m Rebecca Flower Young, I have a lot more to talk about than just one flag; if I’m an upholsterer who has switched to camp accoutrements and colours during the war, I also have a lot more to talk about than upholstery and a flag. By portraying someone smaller, my narrative is broader. So the heck with Betsy Ross. I’m someone you’ve never heard of before, but whom you’ll be glad you met.