Tag Archives: Philadelphia

Living History With Betsy Ross

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The Betsy Ross House sits up against the sidewalk in Philadelphia’s Old City. It might be easy to miss amidst all the other historic buildings if you aren’t paying attention. You enter via a shaded courtyard that leads into a gift shop where you purchase tickets and access the home.

As part of this self guided tour, you learn that this place we call the Betsy Ross House never actually belonged to the Ross family. In fact, she and her husbands never owned a home. This house was owned by Hannah Lithgow, a widow, who rented rooms in her home. Today, we might call it a boarding house. 

The house has been restored to how it might have looked when Betsy lived there and they know which room likely belonged to Betsy. The fact it was purchased and preserved for prosperity in the late 19th century saved this building from the many travesties performed on old homes in the 20th century. Still, it sounds like there were some issues to contend with like a window that had been converted into a door for a balcony that was added on at some point. The fireplace in Betsy’s room had been covered up and wood was salvaged from the floors for other projects. 

While American school children are well familiar with the name Betsy Ross and the role she played in creating the first American flag, this wasn’t always the case.

It wasn’t until 1870, when her grandson William Canby delivered a speech to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania that her story was shared publicly. Before that, it was told within her own family and their circle of friends. 

By 1898 this Arch Street home had been identified as the place where Betsy lived and it was purchased jointly by Charles Weisgerber, the American Flag House and Betsy Ross Memorial Association. 

I asked a docent about her favorite piece in the house and she was quick to tell us to look for something we might not have noticed. Betsy’s own sewing box is located in her bedroom. It’s on the floor, next to the flag that’s draped over her work chair.

Something to note about that flag is that there was no U.S. Flag Code in Betsy Ross’ time. There’s a sign that explains they chose to display the flag across a chair and the floor to give an accurate representation of what it would be like to stitch such a large, bulky flag. This one is a ten foot flag, a common size in the 18th century. 

Never fear! The flag is not actually touching the floor. In compliance with our modern Flag Code, there is a cloth underneath the flag to prevent it from actually touching the floor. 

This is a self guided tour and there’s not a ton to see or touch. However, I highly recommend the tour. First of all, there is a Betsy Ross reenactor who clearly is a skilled seamstress. She does a lovely demonstration and can answer all manner of questions about the flag, about things related to sewing and about Betsy Ross. She breathes life into this human being.

Plus, there’s something special about roaming the home of one of our nation’s most famous people who didn’t live in the limelight. She lived quietly, performing her patriotic duty without seeking fame or fortune. We got to walk the narrow curved steps she traveled each day and we got to breathe the air of a home that was designated as historic a century and a half ago. Guys, her sewing box was on display for all the world to see! 

It is a lovely experience and inexpensive too. There are few barriers to prevent an active imagination from running wild with the promise of the history that was made here. Go see it or at least check it out online.

They have activities and live performances throughout the day. Be sure to also stop and pay your respects at Betsy’s grave.

Thanks To Our Volunteer Firefighters

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They leave the supper table without ever taking a bite. They quietly run for the exit at their child’s school play. They rouse themselves from warm beds to venture out into the cold, dark winter night. They leave their jobs, their farms and their loved ones behind to don fifty or more pounds of gear to run toward danger.

These men and women are a special breed. They are volunteer firefighters.

If you live in a city or a wealthy community, you probably take for granted that when you call 911 there will be someone waiting at a firehouse to answer your cries for help. A car crash. A grease fire. A carbon monoxide alarm. A smoke-filled home in the middle of the night. These are some of the many reasons we all depend on firefighters to help. 

But in small communities and especially small, rural communities, the people waiting for your call aren’t paid to wait at the firehouse. They are volunteers who go about their lives and work, not unlike Clark Kent just before he transforms into Superman.

Here they come to save the day. Only, they’re doing it for love of community, neighbor and stranger rather than vocation. 

This has been on my mind a lot lately. Southern Ohio is experiencing a horrendous drought. Burn bans throughout the area are meant to protect us all. A carelessly tossed cigarette or someone roasting a hot dog outside could result in hours spent fighting a brush fire. Yet, people  ignore the ban. They burn their trash, their brush and anything else they darn well please with no regard for the risk to human life, animals or property. 

Our volunteer fire departments have worked tirelessly this summer and this week has been the worst so far. After a full day out fighting brush fires, multiple local departments responded to a fire caused by a blown transformer at a power generating plant last night.

I am in awe of every single person who answers when the rest of us are in need. 

As regular readers here know, I just came back from Philadelphia where fire departments are a big deal. This is where Benjamin Franklin formed the first ever fire brigade. At his museum you’ll see a bucket once used by a volunteer firefighter. They would line up and draw water from a neighbor’s well, passing one bucket at a time to fill up the fire engine.

We’ve come a long way since then. In Philly today, you’ll see a heavy presence of neighborhood fire stations and some gorgeous murals celebrating their rich firefighting history. Advances in technology make firefighting easier than these humble beginnings and safer too. 

Yet, there is an inherent risk these brave folks face every time they head into a burning building or toward some kind of hazmat disaster.

Plus, the time commitments, the danger, the overall risk of the endeavor and the constant need to raise money for the department to survive have left many volunteer departments in desperate need of help. Many firefighters are aging out and hanging up their gear for the last time and young people aren’t stepping up to join in the same numbers they once did. 

After all, who wants to leave their family mid bite because someone else caught their Thanksgiving turkey on fire? Who wants to leave their air conditioned home to battle a brush fire in sweltering temperatures? Who wants to leave their tractor in the field or a customer at their place of work to do traffic control at a car accident? 

Thankfully, there are still people willing to do this. And they’re willing to do it without demanding to know what’s in it for them. What’s in it for them, by the way, is knowing they helped another and that someone else will be there if they ever find themselves on the other side of the emergency. 

My community would be in trouble without them and I am grateful every single day for these brave souls who want to help. Mr Roger’s taught us all to look for the helpers in times of trouble. If you need a helper, look no further than your volunteer fire department. If you don’t need help, go find them anyway and thank them for all they do.

Ps: All first responders, both the paid and the volunteer, are pretty amazing. Let’s be grateful to them all!

Chinatown

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Philadelphia has a number of distinct neighborhoods including a vibrant Chinatown. The forty foot Friendship Gate into this neighborhood is even prettier in person.

I wish we had more time to explore here but I was thrilled to at least see the gate. Perhaps I’ll make it back again someday!

Fun At The Benjamin Franklin Museum

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Whoever designed the Benjamin Franklin Museum has a great sense of humor and playful creativity not commonly found in history museums. It’s a fun place for all ages to visit and well worth the five bucks it costs to enter.

Franklin was a Renassiance Man through and through. He was a scientist, printer, writer, publisher, statesman, diplomat and political philosopher. He was curious about the world in ways that seem almost boundless and his contributions to society continue to be felt today. I read something describing him as an American polymath, a word I did not know. That’s Greek for someone who has learned much on different subjects.

They tell the story of his life and work through the lens of his character attributes and use an assortment of artifacts, computer animations and hands-on exhibits to do so. There’s a little squirrel named Skuggs who helps to tell the stories. You see, Franklin was fond of small creatures like squirrels, or skuggs, as they were called. 

It’s a fun museum with plenty to keep the kids engaged and lots of big ideas and some quality artifacts to keep the grownups interested too. Rather than try to recreate his home, the courtyard features a ghost house where his home once stood. There are markers on the ground for his well, ice house and privy. There are pretty flowers, trees and some images too. Plus, you can go in a print shop and witness pages being set and printed.

Franklin owned slaves early in life but eventually became an abolitionist. He studied electricity and invented all kinds of things we still use today including the lightning rod, flexible catheters, and drumroll please….. bifocals – a creation I don’t enjoy needing but will be forever indebted to him for giving us!

Franklin lived his life by Thirteen Virtues which you can read about here.

He was the only person to sign the Declaration of Independence, Treaty of Paris, peace with Britan and the U.S. Constitution. He also founded Philadelphia’s first fire brigade. At the time, there were no fire hydrants so volunteers owned buckets and would stand in a line to relay buckets of water drawn from a neighborhood well to fill the tank of the fire engine. Look how far we have come since then! 

I’m especially fond of these virtues and can’t help but think we would be better off as a nation if more people (including myself) made even the teeniest effort to embrace them.

He became a vegetarian as a young man for reasons based on health, ethics and economy. This resounds with me as I’m pescatarian, trying to mostly eat vegetarian wiith only a few fish meals a week. He was a musician and composer too, doing his part to bring beauty to the world. 

Franklin believed in doing what he could to improve the world around him. In fact, he began each day by reflecting on a single question: “What good shall I do this day?” At the end of the day, he would return to this question by asking himself: “What good have I done today?” He thought about how he spent his time, whether he had done any good deeds or found ways to leave the world in better shape than he found it. 

What a better world we would have if we all went about looking for ways to to help. 

Meanwhile, if you’re in Philadelphia, I suggest you find your way to Old City to visit this museum. Learn all about that here.

While you’re there, stop by his grave at the Christ Church Cemetery. You can go inside for a small fee during their open hours. This fee helps with the massive responsibility of maintaining and preserving the history that lies at rest here. If you’re like me and couldn’t get there during hours, you can view Franklin’s grave from the sidewalk outside. They say leaving a penny on his grave will bring you good luck.

All of this is within easy walking distance of the LIberty Bell and loads of other historic sites.

Visiting The Liberty Bell

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Seeing the Liberty Bell in person has long been a bucket list item so I was grateful that we had a good experience visiting last Saturday. I wanted to go because it is incredibly symbolic in US history and rightfully so. In case you don’t remember from school, the Liberty Bell was commissioned by the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1751 to mark the 50th anniversary of William Penn’s Charter of Privileges. This is the bell that rang on July 8, 1776 to summon Philadelphia citizens for the public reading of the Declaration of Independence.

The bell is easily recognizable for its iconic crack and attracts millions of people each year. Today, it is available for public viewing in a nice building across the cobblestone street from its original location – the bell tower in the former Pennsylvania State House which we now call Independence Hall.

No living person knows exactly when the crack began and none have heard it ring with its clapper. The US Park Service says the crack likely formed in the 1840s and that local metal workers attempted to repair the bell in 1846. The repair attempt actually made the situation worse and a second crack formed, silencing the bell forever. 

These are the stories we are taught here in America. 

Ironically, 1846 was the same year that a Pennsylvania representative named David Wilmot proposed legislation meant to bar the expansion of slavery into lands acquired after the Mexican American War. The legislation failed and worsened North-South tensions around the same time the symbol for national liberty was irreversibly damaged. 

What we don’t consider is how the LIberty Bell is viewed by others. The NPS does a decent job of suggesting that it has meant different things to different groups of American people. A photo of Chief LIttle Bear with the Liberty Bell at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco tells a much different story than the narrative of freedom and liberty for all. This member of the Blackfeet Tribe stares at the camera with piercing eyes that suggest he didn’t care much for the American notion that segregation or assimilation that suppressed his people’s cultural practices were the only options for coexisting.

An iron collar and chains used to literally hold slaves in bondage tells another story as well. 

Social movements including Women’s Suffrage and Civil Rights embraced the Liberty Bell for protest and celebration, giving the bell increasingly profound meaning as groups that were not given freedoms by the founding fathers labored to claim what was rightfully theirs.

I found myself feeling some mixture of shame and pride for my country’s choices across the centuries and something akin to bittersweet as I began to drill down to the changing importance of this national symbol. 

Americans and people of many other nationalities were there that morning – some looked bored, others excited. Many seemed to just want an Instagram photo while others wanted to linger. But nothing prepared me for the amount of people from other countries and the excitement they held for being so close to the Liberty Bell. 

I overheard an elderly man who spoke good English with an Indian accent ask a question of a park ranger. He told the ranger that he had dreamed of seeing the Liberty Bell and could hardly believe he was there. I overheard a dad and young daughter speaking a language I did not recognize. He was pointing excitedly and she was smiling as he told her some story. I still wish I knew what they were saying. 

It made me wish more American families showed such interest in our own nation’s history. 

Our good experience was made possible by our being early risers and curious people who believe you can always sleep when you get home from a trip. We were in line right after they opened and it took just 2-3 minutes to get through security. From there, we took our time studying everything on display and waited for a couple of other parties to take their pictures before we got ours. 

This was a stark contrast to the line we saw later in the day. It extended well down the sidewalk and the view through the window showed a line of people simply streaming past the bell. In other words, go early to avoid the crowds and have a much richer experience. 

This was a good start to the day. From here, we went on to the Ben Franklin Museum, the Betsy Ross House, Christ Church and Independence Hall with numerous stops to look at other things along the way. It was a busy day and one I won’t soon forget. 

Keep coming back. There are more stories to tell!

Mercantile Mural

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Philadelphia is an interesting city to walk for its architecture, pocket parks and art. There are sculptures and murals everywhere you look.

This mural called Mercantile Library was created in 2019 by Kala Hagopian of Hagopian Arts. It is at the location of the former Mercantile Library which existed at this site between 1952 and 1989.

Look closely and you’ll find the featured books were all published during the library’s operation and some of them are about Philadelphians.

The colors are spectacular and the people are life sized. It’s gorgeous and a book lover’s dream come true!

This mural is located at 1021 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. Walk by if you’re in town!