, and i talk about betsie ross because as many people here will know, betsie ross was an p upholsterer and made tassels and fringe and fabricated flags and a range of goods that decorated philadelphia interiors in that period. but in the legend she's recastb. what is it about women making furniture that is so hard to reconcile with popular imagination? so that is where the book began, to try and understand this phenomenon. as many of you know, the legend of betsie ross focuses on the one moment, june or may of 1776, on the eve of independence, and i want to share with you the legends as it comes down in the affidavits collected later by the family in case some of you are not familiar with those pieces. in the legend, george washington, george ross, and robert morris come to betsie ross's shop in the spring of 1776 and have in hand a design for a flag. in that design the stars they have in mind, have 6 points and the heart of the family story is how betsie ross looks at that design and snips a piece of paper and shows that making five pointed stars is more efficient and that's the heart

and so, in the run-up to the war of 1812, betsy ross gets a really staggering order for flags.nd this is what's most moving and exciting to me. in one order, she is asked to make 46 garrison flags with all dispatch for the arsenal. i mean, these are large flags. i calculated the book thousands is to choose this would require. and so betsy, her daughter, her nieces, the whole family would be set to work to deliver these flags. there is one order for a set of six flags that are eating by 22 b. 18 to two flag and a five-time betsy rosses house was 436 square feet on any given floor. and so i don't know where these flags were being made, but these were tremendous orders that the family really depended on in this period. and in fact, carissa and betsy sent letters soliciting work to the navy story because they needed to keep those naval contracts coming. it was very much the core of their business although they did continue to make domestic interior window shades and the nation blinds and curtains as the sort of bread-and-butter of the upholster trade for that time. toward the end o