A Legend is No Longer
What do you do when something you learned about as a child and were rather proud of, even telling several classes of 5th graders about it, turns out to not be true?
The story of Helen Seavey and her wedding dress is one that has been passed down through my family for many generations. Apparently, Helen, who married in May of 1777, donated her wedding dress to make the stars for the flag destined for the Ranger, one of the ships captained by John Paul Jones. He was the founder of the American Navy and this flag would be the first American flag to be seen in a European port. The flag was sewn at a quilting party in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The source material, a book by August Buell, “Paul Jones: Founder of the American Navy”, even mentioned several other young ladies at the gathering.
Well, he apparently was not the most accurate of biographers. Anna Farwell de Koven later disproved much of his writing. She was researching John Paul Jones herself when Buell's biography was published in 1900. This book, as well as his other biographies of William Penn and President Andrew Jackson are full of what today might be called "alternative facts." He just made up facts and sources and when questioned, he explained it away as having lost his notes and even said “I was careless about preserving the documentary evidence.”
Yet, even though the myth is pretty much disproven, there is a Helen Seavey Quilting Society in Portsmouth, NH. Some even think that Buell's story and the formation of this group may have helped save the John Paul John's house from destruction by attaching a plaque to the building where he had boarded when in Portsmouth outfitting his ships.
It is kind of sad to lose a part of "your" history, but I do think the truth is always better.
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