Dear Reader,

This is the first Issue of our book and I am fairly new so our next issue will be longer with more text. There was a shortage of paper this week due to the war, but I would much rather have our soldiers using it and us to learn to do without. Fabric has also been in short supply, but we will manage. I recently attended a wedding where I was a bridesmaid and we wore the most lovely shade of pink...if only we had colored tintypes! I shall try and get a picture of it, but alas those are so hard to come by.

Thank you for reading the first post...by next week I shall have posted more pictures and fashion ideas...but for now I must go. There is much to be done .

                                    respectively yours,

                                                           Miss Salina Hastings

P.S.     If you have a question regarding fashions of our era please write to me at this address and I shall get back to you as soon as time allows. I do not post or respond on Mondays due to my volunteer work at the hospital...thank you for being understanding.

I just wanted to give you a little info on Betsy Ross!

Betsy went to a Friends (Quaker) public school. For eight hours a day she was taught reading, writing, and received instruction in a trade — probably sewing. After completing her schooling, Betsy's father apprenticed her to a local upholsterer. Today we think of upholsterers primarily as sofa-makers and such, but in colonial times they performed all manner of sewing jobs, including flag-making. It was at her job that Betsy fell in love with another apprentice, John Ross. On a November night in 1773, 21-year-old Betsy eloped with John Ross. Two years after they were married they started their own upholstery business.

Betsy and John felt the impact of the war. Fabrics needed for business were becoming hard to come by. Business was slow. John joined the Pennsylvania militia. While guarding an ammunition cache in mid-January 1776, John Ross was mortally wounded in an explosion. Though his young wife tried to nurse him back to health he died on the 21st. Just after this, she was requested to make the flag.

Betsy would be married again in June 1777, this time to sea captain Joseph Ashburn in a ceremony performed at Old Swedes Church in Philadelphia.

Betsy and Joseph had two daughters (Zillah, who died in her youth, and Elizabeth). On a trip to the West Indies to procure war supplies for the Revolutionary cause, Captain Ashburn was captured by the British and sent to Old Mill Prison in England where he died in March 1782, several months after the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, the last major battle of the Revolutionary War. Betsy learned of her husband's death from her old friend, John Claypoole, another sailor imprisoned at the brutal Old Mill. In May of 1783, Betsy was married for the third time. The couple had five daughters (Clarissa Sidney, Susannah, Rachel, Jane, and Harriet, who died at nine months). John died in 1817.

Please post any comments you might have.

~Betsy

Hi!  Molly Pitcher here.  I am going to tell you a little bit about a great movie about the Civil War.  It is called Gods and Generals.  It is mostly about the southern generals, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee.  I watched it about 2 or 3 months ago.  It is really amazing to watch, because both Jackson and Lee were Christians!  It really got me thinking!  The North had the right ideas, about abolishing slavery and such, but they were always complaining about their generals.  Whereas the South had the good Godly generals, but the wrong cause.  Gods and Generals is a touching story that makes you realize how awful the war was, and that soldiers were just regular people!  I really recommend it.  There is some violence, but it isn't bad at all.  Basically you just see people fall over during battles.  Gods and Generals is a very educational and worthwhile movie.  There's also a sequal called Gettysburg, but I haven't seen that.  Well, stop by again soon!  I will try to post on here more often.

Molly Pitcher

I thought you might want to know about the real Molly Pitcher.  Here it is:

"Molly Pitcher" was a nickname given to a woman who may have fought in the American Revolutionary War. Historians differ on who the "real" Molly Pitcher was, or even if she existed at all. Since the various Molly Pitcher tales grew in the telling, historians now often regard Molly Pitcher as folklore rather than history. However, "Molly Pitcher" may be a composite image inspired by the actions of a number of real women. The name itself may have originated as a nickname given to women who carried water to men on the battlefield during the war. This water was not for drinking, as is popularly believed, but for swabbing out the cannons.

One candidate for the "real" Molly Pitcher is Mary Hayes McCauley (or Mary Ludwig Hays), about whom there is conflicting biographical information, including her actual name and year of birth. According to one version of the story, she was born to a German family in New Jersey, and attended her husband William Hays, an artilleryman, in the Battle of Monmouth on June 28, 1778. When William fell wounded, possibly from heat stroke, Mary bravely took her husband's post at his cannon. According to the legend, after the battle, General George Washington issued her a warrant as a noncommissioned officer, and she was thereafter known by the nickname "Sergeant Molly".

My thanks to Wikipedia.org for that articile.  Well, I hope you enjoyed that information.  Please feel free to post as many comments as you like.  : )

Molly Pitcher / "Sergent Molly"     ; )

Hi!  This is Betsy Ross's friend, Molly Pitcher.  Why are you posting on Betsy's blog, you might ask?  Well, I'll tell you.  I asked Betsy if I could join her on her history blog, because I love history too.  She said yes!  So, we will now be a team on this blog.  Come back soon to for some interesting history facts!

Molly Pitcher