A Mother for America tells the remarkable story of how Philadelphia Quaker Betsy Ross, unknown beyond her family until 1870, became one of the most famous women in US history, despite sustained scholarly skepticism about her role in making the first American flag. Charles Hardy III traces the transformation of family memory into historical "fact" by her grandson in 1870 and shows how artists, teachers, marketers, reformers, and politicians repeatedly refashioned Betsy Ross to promote competing visions of patriotism, gender roles, citizenship, and national identity--and to sell goods and make money. A parallel narrative follows the controversial transformation of a small colonial Philadelphia rowhouse from a beer saloon into a patriotic shrine, tourist destination, and then as the nation's first historic house museum, The Betsy Ross House, devoted to women's labor during the era of the American Revolution. From schoolrooms and civic pageants to world fairs, war-bond drives, thirteen-sta
