One my short weekend visit to Philadelphia, we did manage to squeeze in one tourist stop between walking Ms. Ginger, hanging out with Ken & running the Rock ‘n’ Roll Philadelphia Half-Marathon. The Betsy Ross House is just around the corner from Stephanie’s new home & she’d been wanting to check it out. I’d driven by the house, in the heart of the Old Town historical district last summer on a tour bus, but hadn’t been inside.
There is a little courtyard area & her actual house is on the right behind the bushes. I was so engrossed hanging out with Stephanie that I neglected to take a picture of the real front of her house, but it’s a narrow old home that was squeezed in between surrounding structures.
The courtyard is a nice little shady area in front of the museum entrance and gift store. They have seats & sell snacks by the fountain and Betsy is actually buried right here just to the left of this photo.
Here is the gift shop. That’s about all I can show you since there are no photos allowed inside the house on the tour. Typical lots of paraphernalia, and we upgraded to the audio tour that guided us through the various rooms in her house.
I’ll just say that Betsy was a tough woman! She had a very challenging life & was an incredibly resourceful & brilliant business woman. I was more impressed with her life story than the fact that she’d made the first flag.
There was one room where we were allowed to take photos & there was a museum worker sewing the old fashioned way. They had done a great job with the museum and kept many of the original furniture and household objects. It was very interesting walking through a very old home and seeing the many ways things have changed in the past 200 years.
Since I have such an awesome best friend, she snagged a postcard from the gift shop & sent me a surprise note with some words of encouragement on it. There’s an inside joke here about busy women don’t have time to make bread (Betsy’s life story), but Stephanie is a prolific and wonderful baker.
GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: Fall is officially here in Houston & I’m loving the “top down, windows open” weather!
How cute! I once played Betsy Ross in the 5th grade haha.
What a coincidence! Bet you were cute..