Historic Philadelphia

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Sometime in early ’76, John Ross, a twentyfour-year-old
militia private, was killed
when munitions he was guarding exploded
in a river front warehouse on Water Street
near Arch. Ross, an upholsterer by trade,
was survived by his wife, the former
Elizabeth Griscom, also age twenty-four,
familiarly known to her friends as Betsy.
She had been dismissed from the
Philadelphia Monthly Meeting of Friends
after marrying Ross, son of an Episcopal
cleric, in a civil ceremony in 1773. The
young widow continued in the sewing
business, including some flag making. Her
house became a landmark, seen here in
1859 (left) and today (right).
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR.
HISTORIC PHILADELPHIA
38
Market. His effort, after some tinkering by
Ben Franklin and John Adams, was presented
to Congress on June 28, and the contents
were debated until July 2. That afternoon, the
Congressmen dissolved the political bond
between Great Britain and the colonies.
On the 8th, while voters were passing ballots
into the State House windows to elect delegates
to a convention that would form a new
government for independent Pennsylvania,
Colonel John Nixon went outside and climbed
onto the 20-foot-high, 15-foot-wide platform
that had been built in 1769 to observe the
transit of Venus across the sun. To a crowd of
voters and officials, he read the Declaration of
Independence. Busy congressmen watched
briefly out the windows. Afterward, some
patriot leaders and soldiers of the Philadelphia
Associators went inside and tore the royal arms
from the wall, to provide fuel for an evening
bonfire, and the big bell in the State House was
rung to proclaim liberty, in spite of the risk to
the rotten old tower.
On October 26 Ben Franklin sailed for
France to negotiate an alliance, taking along on
the American armed sloop Reprisal his two
grandsons: Temple, sixteen, son of William
Franklin, and Benny Bache, seven, his daughter
Sarah’s boy.
British military might was looming near
New York, but the situation looked less bleak
after Washington crossed the Delaware from
Bucks County on Christmas night in a
successful surprise attack on the British
army’s German mercenaries at Trenton.
In 1776 a twenty-six-year-old French sea
captain with a bad eye, after dodging British
warships, tied up his ship, the Jeune Bébé
(named for a New Orleans girl who jilted him)
in the port of Philadelphia, and settled down
to sell his cargo in a store on Water Street. His
name was Ettienne Girard, but he Anglicized it
to Stephen, married a poor shipcaulker’s
daughter, and after the Revolution, would
build up a merchant fleet, on his way to
becoming one of Philadelphia’s best known
citizens, and its richest.
There also arrived in the city in 1776 a thirtyfive-year-old
Marylander with a household
including several slaves and several children (he
would ultimately have seventeen). He was
Charles Wilson Peale, portrait painter, inventor,
expert on herbs and medicines, and enthusiastic
patriot. He got himself elected to the Committee
of Safety and raised a company of militia which
he led at the battles of Trenton, Princeton, and
Germantown. He often cooked for his troops,
made shoes for them (he had apprenticed as a