A NEW HISTORICAL ROMANCE.
Betsy Ross.
A Romance of the Flag. By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss, author of “In Defiance of the King,” etc. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
“Betsy Ross” is a historical romance based upon the story of the maker of the first official American flag. Mrs. Ross was a charming young widow of but little more than twenty-three when she was commissioned to make the flag from a design submitted to her by Washington. Her husband had been killed by an accident at the Philadelphia arsenal within a few months after his marriage.
The romance which the author has woven around the origin of our flag will quicken the pulse of every reader by the wealth of striking characters and dramatic incidents, and the absorbing interest of the plot. History has furnished a motive which has been curiously neglected in fiction, and the picturesque figures of the time, sea-rangers and Quakers, redcoats and Continental soldiers, and even Washington himself, have to do with the development of a strange and thrilling story wherein Betsy Ross takes the leading part. The ancient tavern, the home of the Philadelphia merchant, the flag-maker’s little shop, and the quaint and charming life of the time, are shown as the background of a series of swift incidents which hold the reader’s attention. “Betsy Ross” is a book to be read, and the reader will recommend it.
The Betsy Ross of history was a singularly bright and winsome woman, and intensely patriotic. Mr. Hotchkiss’s story has been confined to the romantic days of her early womanhood. The house in which the flag was completed, and in and about which most of the action of the novel takes place, still stands on Arch Street, Philadelphia, and the attempt to preserve it as one of the shrines connected with American history is meeting with deserved success. Mrs. Ross (afterward Mrs. Claypoole) died at the great age of ninety-three, and her remains lie in Mount Moriah Cemetery.