An Interview with Lisa Acker Moulder from the Betsy Ross House

Behind every successful museum is someone dedicated and passionate about history; someone who runs the museum with every piece of their soul. At the Betsy Ross House, that woman is Lisa Acker Moulder, the current director of the house. Lisa has dedicated most of her professional career to the Betsy Ross House - 21 years - and has made some incredible changes. Today the museum is a must-see whenever you are in Philadelphia. I had the privilege of interviewing Lisa and got to talk a little bit about the museum, her career, and her favorite parts of Betsy Ross’s story.

To start off, I asked Lisa what had been the most rewarding thing she has done at the Betsy Ross House or what is something she is most proud of there?

The Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Her answer: When I first started here, 21 years ago in July, I started out as a consultant working to accession the entire collection. Prior to my being here, we had never had a professional curatorial staff member before. We had a hundred-plus years of objects and there was no documentation for then. Prior staff members had made some attempts to add a numbering system but it was really disorganized, so when I started here I came up with a collections management policy to access everything and get all the documentation in place for the artifacts. At that time I admit it was a little embarrassing to say that I worked at the Betsy Ross House because the public perception of the Betsy Ross House was far different back then. There were years of mismanagement and unfortunately with no professional museum staff — things were kind of a mess here. The interpretation wasn’t great; there were signs in every room with basically just the flag story — the making of the first flag was really the only story we were telling here. In the rooms, the visitors would stand on one side of a floor-to-ceiling plexiglass barrier that was very thick and foggy and there was always a glare on it. It was very difficult to see what was in the rooms and the signs were often placed far away making them hard to read. It was so bad other historical sites would not recommend that visitors come to Betsy Ross House. But for me, it was a museum job. While I had had other museum jobs prior to this, it's even know difficult to get into the museum field. So I took on this job and I knew my work processing the collection was an important one. Then the director at the time left and we got a new director who did have a museum background — we were finally making adjustments to become a more professional and reputable museum but we still had work to do. With the new director, I asked if we could remove the terrible plexiglass barriers, but I always got the answer that there were too many people coming through the Betsy Ross House and there was no way to accommodate the number of people without barriers. I felt there had to be a way to take them down, so when the director left, I — at the urging of someone who had been working for us on an intern basis — interviewed for the job and was offered the position. I finally had the opportunity to make some really positive changes that I felt like we could’ve done all along. My first order of business was removing just one plexiglass barrier and seeing if it would work for us. We started in the upholstery shop, we took down the floor to ceiling barrier and put up a wall that’s about waist high and it blends in with the architecture of the room, with the same color and style mouldings, and we put our Betsy Ross interpreter inside the upholstery shop. Prior to that she would sit on the visitors side and point through the foggy plexiglass to the artifacts and tell visitors about the items. Now when we hire our Betsy Ross interpreters, we realized it was important that they have upholstery skills in addition to extensive knowledge about her life. We had to make some adjustments to the shop to have the Betsy Ross interpreter in there. One concession we had to make is we had to take out some of the 18th century artifacts from the room, but we made reproductions of these artifacts that our Betsy Ross interpreters and the visitors can actually handle. Now when you come to the Betsy Ross house you can meet Betsy in her upholstery shop as she’s working on 18th century upholstery work that we then use to furnish other parts of the house. Our Betsy Ross interpreters made all of the bed curtains, mattresses, pillows, window curtains, slip cases, and pretty much every piece of fabric you see in the Betsy Ross House with 18th century materials and techniques while interacting with the public. My biggest accomplishment is really turning this place into a reputable museum that other scholars and museums are happy to partner with. We’ve been approached by a couple museums to do some commissions for them as well as scholars who are proud to work with us. I’m really proud to see the museum go from a tourist trap 20 years ago to a reputable establishment. I am also proud to say that all the plexiglass barriers are down in the house and we have made it a much more engaging and interactive experience.

Being from the Philadelphia area, I mentioned that one thing I specifically remember on my sixth-grade walking field trip of all the historical sites of Philadelphia was the Betsy Ross interpreter in her upholstery shop working and interacting with us. I then asked Lisa about her favorite artifact or favorite part of the Betsy Ross House.

A: I think Betsy Ross’s snuffbox is one of my favorite artifacts. It's not currently on display — we bring it out occasionally, but I think it's really fascinating for a number of reasons. First of all, people in the 21st century don’t think of someone like Betsy Ross using snuff, but we have her silver snuff-box engraved with her initials and according to her family she didn’t use it because she got a high from it because back in the 18th and 19th century it was believed that you could use snuff for medicinal purposes. We do know that Betsy Ross's eyesight was beginning to fail the last couple decades of her life and she had lost her vision entirely by the time of death, so her family said that she thought snorting a little bit of finely ground tobacco was a way of helping her eyesight. This is an artifact that Betsy Ross probably cherished and thought that she was doing a good thing and preserving her eyesight with this snuff which was probably not the case. It really just makes her human.

Q: What is your favorite story in the house?

A Betsy Ross interpreter at work in her upholstery shop

A: In the house, we still tell the story of the making of the first flag because that’s why people come here and that’s what Betsy is known for, but now we’ve shifted towards a woman’s history museum. What makes us so unique is that most historic house museums interpret the story of wealthy, powerful men. That's not at all what Betsy was: she was working class and she lived in an urban environment. That’s not a story that’s really told anywhere else. When you really break down Betsy’s story you can pick out pieces of her life that many of us can relate to. I like to focus on the fact that she was a single working mom. She didn’t have any children with her first husband, with her second husband she had two daughters but the first one died as an infant, and with her third husband she had 5 daughters and the last one died as an infant. She was widowed three times and when her second husband passed away she was left to raise a little girl and support them all by herself. There were times in her life when she was doing pretty well and was getting some pretty lucrative upholstery commissions, but then there were also times when she really struggled to the point where she received aid from the Free Quaker Meeting House, where she worshipped, in the form of shoes for her husband who had a disability as well as firewood and food. She even took a job cleaning the meetinghouse to make a little bit of money. I know so many people who have that type of person in their family — maybe they’re raised by a grandma who took little cleaning jobs here and there to support the family or maybe their dad wasn’t in their lives and it was just mom supporting everyone. She lived centuries ago but her story is one that a lot of us can relate to.

Q: You created the Flag Festival at the Betsy Ross House, can you tell me a bit about the Festival and how it will look this year?

A: It’s going to be a little different this year; we’re still working on what it’s going to look like. We’ve always celebrated Flag day at the Betsy Ross House. We've been doing it for a hundred years now, but about twelve years ago we decided we really need to own this holiday. Unfortunately, most people don’t even know what Flag day is — I’ve always known flag day because it’s my dad’s birthday and little did I know I would go on to run the Betsy Ross House! Flag Day on June 14th is probably as important as the 4th of July, so about 12 years ago we started our Flag Festival. It started out as a weekend long event but now it’s a week long event where the week in which Flag Day falls we do something special every day to commemorate the holiday and the pride in our flag. It could be a special flag history with the Betsy Ross interpreter or it could be a special visit from George Washington. Each year we normally end the festival with a big event in our courtyard with circus acts and carnival games. We make the whole week very family friendly and accessible. We always do a naturalization ceremony on Flag Day and that’s usually a highlight of Flag Fest. Last year was a little bit different as we were in the middle of the pandemic and the Betsy Ross House was closed when Flag Day occurred. Our entire staff was furloughed but we still wanted to do something to commemorate the day so we didn’t do anything in person so we had out Betsy Ross interpreter film a special presentation that we posted online for the holiday. This year we’re planning to do it in person again. Of course, we’ll probably still have some capacity limitations but we’re going to do a week of events and bring back the naturalization ceremony that everyone loves. One thing we’re going to do this year that we’re really excited about is that we’re working with Mars chocolate and we’re going to assemble a 4 foot by 8 foot flag made entirely out of M&Ms. We’re going to start assembling it on June 14th and by the end of the week on June 19th, we will reveal the finished flag and you can come to the Betsy Ross House for photo-ops with the flag and then we’ll hand out free packets of M&Ms to our visitors.

The 2013 Flag Week celebrations at the Betsy Ross House

Q: What is your favorite part or fun fact about the history of the flag?

A; This is newer information that we learned just a few years ago. A lot of Betsy’s naysayers would say that the story of Betsy Ross making the first flag is just ridiculous because why would George Washington come to her of all people. He’s familiar with seamstresses and upholsterers in Virginia. Why would he choose this random female upholsterer in Philadelphia to make this flag? It doesn't make sense. A few years ago, Mount Vernon was working a reinterpretation of George and Martha’s bedchamber so they looked through their records to see if George or Martha had recorded what type of bed curtains they had so they could create an accurate reproduction. When they were looking through the records they found that when George was here in Philadelphia in 1774 for the First Continental Congress he paid Betsy and John Ross--her first husband--to make bed curtains for Mount Vernon. How did George Washington choose this random upholstery lady in Philadelphia for the flag? He had hired her to do a pretty good commission for Mount Vernon, so he was familiar with her work and clearly was happy with her sewing skills and upholstery skills and thought that she was up to the task. What’s so interesting is that Betsy and John Ross had just finished their apprenticeship just a few months earlier and they were just starting their own business. They were commissioned by the Chew family--Benjamin Chew was a Supreme Court Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court at the time so he was a very powerful and wealthy man--and he hired John and Betsy Ross to make curtains and slipcases for his daughter’s house. She was about to get married so this was a wedding gift for her. We know that George Washington had dinner with him a short time later so we think that Benjamin Chew likely recommended to George Washington that he hire John and Betsy Ross to make curtains for Mount Vernon. It’s unusual because there were other well-known upholsterers in Philadelphia who were very well established and were doing work for a while. These men could afford any upholsterers in the country and decided to use these brand new upholsterers. It’s also sad to me to think that after the Benjamin Chew commission and the George Washington commission they had a couple other really large commissions so they were on their way to a very lucrative career, but the combination of John Ross’s tragic death just two years later and the war completely changed the trajectory of their careers and Betsy Ross struggled to a point where she had to receive aid. They could’ve been very successful and that’s not what happened due to a number of circumstances.

Q: Is there anything you are looking forward to at the Betsy Ross House, either after the pandemic or as we move to reopening?

A: I am looking forward to welcoming visitors back again and having things be normal again. There’s never a good time for a pandemic but it happened at the worst possible time for us. We were just about to start our busy school group season which is usually the end of March through mid-June. We missed all of that school group season that goes immediately into summer tourist season so we missed most of that. Our organization normally has a big fundraiser in May that we missed and we host the Chinese Lantern Festival at Franklin Square Park which is a huge money marker for our organization and we lost that as well. It was a really financially devastating time for us. We were fortunate enough to get the green light to open back up in August and now several months later we are finally starting to see visitors return. Some people were trickling in back in August. Prior to the pandemic on a random day in August we would have 500 people but when we reopened we would have anywhere from 15 to maybe 100 people a day. Now I think people are feeling more comfortable, are looking for things to do, they know the Betsy Ross House has all the best safety protocols in place, and people are feeling comfortable returning. We’re hoping people continue to come through and things start to look “normal” again. One of the most challenging parts for me was worrying about my staff. Our entire staff was furloughed back on March 27th — I'll never forget it because it’s my birthday — and on March 27th of 2020, my boss had to call me and say I’m sorry we’re going to have to furlough everybody and I totally understood. We’re a small non-profit so that was the only way to even think that we would have a future was to furlough the staff. When we were able to reopen again in August, I was so happy to be able to bring everyone back. Then the city of Philadelphia shut museums down again in November and that was devastating. The full-time staff was able to stay on but since we weren’t open to the public we didn’t need to keep a ticket seller or a tour guide on and it just broke my heart thinking I would have to furlough them again right before the holidays. Fortunately we had a friend of the Betsy Ross House who also didn’t want us to have to furlough anybody so he offered to help keep them employed, so we were able to keep people working through the second shutdown. It’s been terribly difficult for everyone, but we’re starting to see some positive change.

If you’re planning a trip to Philadelphia, be sure to check out the Betsy Ross House and support this wonderful organization! Additionally, check out their website for other events they host, including seasonal events and night programs here. Even if you’re not around the Philadelphia area, the Betsy Ross House is offering virtual field trips for school or tour groups here.

An Interview with Lisa Acker Moulder from the Betsy Ross House

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