Mund’s Tavern Becomes a National Shrine, 1895–1900

Abstract

Beginning with the death of Amelia Mund in 1895, this chapter traces the efforts of the Junior Order United American Mechanics, the women-led Betsy Ross American Flag House Fund Society, and the national fundraising campaign of John Quincy Adams & Company in tandem with the American Flag House and Betsy Ross Memorial Association to purchase 239 Arch Street and preserve it as a national shrine to Old Glory. Adams & Company’s fundraising campaign simultaneously financed preservation and circulated Charles Weisgerber’s visual narrative of the flag’s origins on membership certificates through schools and patriotic networks. The chapter places the struggle to save the house within the broader politics of the 1890s, including the Republican Party’s combative use of the American flag in the presidential election of 1896 and the surge of patriotic fervor unleashed by the Spanish-American War.