Young Storytellers in The Philadelphia Inquirer

Philadelphia’s historic district has a ton of free programming, including 10 benches where trained storytellers wait for a crowd to gather so they can share historic tales. This article marking the program’s 10th anniversary features a 7-year-old who wrote her own story to tell at the benches.

When I interviewed the historian who researches and writes most of these tales, she told me she likes to find the off-beat, unknown stories. She shared one with me, which is in the piece, but I’ll share it below as well. I love this story as much as she does:

Esther De Berdt Reed was English by birth and she moved to Philadelphia just before the American Revolution began. She chose to stand up for her new country, writing a call-to-action pamphlet addressed to women.

In 1780, Reed organized the first successful fund-raiser for the Continental Army, raising a whopping $300,000. Gen. George Washington told her that cash would be best spent on shirts for his soldiers, so Reed and other local women hand-sewed more than 2,000 shirts.

Because they were women, they couldn’t sign the Declaration of Independence.

But they could stitch their names into every shirt they made.