250 Years of Received Wisdom

Every Fourth of July, we repeat the same handful of stories — fireworks, founding fathers, a flag, a hot dog contest with a very old belt. This year, since it’s the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we decided to actually check a few of them against the historical record. Some hold up. Some don’t. One turns out to be a better story than the myth everyone tells.

When Did Fireworks Become Part of the Fourth of July?

Fireworks have been part of the Fourth of July since its very first anniversary, in 1777 — making them one of the oldest, and best-documented, of all Independence Day traditions.

The paper trail starts even earlier than that. On July 3, 1776 — the day before the Continental Congress formally adopted the Declaration — John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail, envisioning how future generations would mark the anniversary: with parades, bells, bonfires, and what he called “illuminations,” the 18th-century term for fireworks. He wasn’t guessing. Almost exactly one year later, on July 4, 1777, Philadelphia held a celebration that matched his prediction closely: ships on the Delaware River fired thirteen-gun salutes, and the evening closed with a fireworks display that opened and closed with thirteen rockets, one for each colony. Boston held its own display that same night. A local newspaper, the Pennsylvania Evening Post, wrote up the Philadelphia celebration the very next morning — which is part of why historians consider this one of the most solidly confirmed traditions of the holiday.

Did Betsy Ross Really Sew the First American Flag?

There’s no evidence from 1776 confirming it. The story as most people know it doesn’t surface publicly until 1870 — nearly a century after it supposedly happened — when Betsy Ross’s grandson told it for the first time.

The familiar version — George Washington visiting Ross’s Philadelphia upholstery shop, a sketch of a flag, a single snip of scissors turning a six-pointed star into a five-pointed one — comes from a speech her grandson, William Canby, gave to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in March 1870. Canby was eleven years old when his grandmother died in 1836, and his account rests on childhood memories, later supported by sworn affidavits from other family members: a daughter, a granddaughter, and a niece. No letter, diary, invoice, or Congressional record from 1776 mentions any of it. Historians who’ve examined the claim, including at the Smithsonian and Britannica, note that there’s still no firm evidence to support the popular story, even though there’s equally no proof it didn’t happen.

What is documented: Ross really was a working flag maker. A May 1777 order from the Pennsylvania State Navy Board survives, paying her for making ship’s colors — proof she was in the flag business, if not proof she made the first national flag. The family retold the story for generations afterward; a 1963 newspaper account has one of Ross’s great-great-granddaughters recounting the same oral tradition, receipt included, nearly a hundred years after Canby’s original speech. That’s less a contradiction than a reminder of how long a well-loved family story can travel before anyone checks it against the record.

Is Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest Really From 1916?

No. The 1916 origin story — four immigrants competing to prove their patriotism — was invented in the early 1970s by a publicist trying to sell hot dogs, and there’s no record of any contest before 1972.

Nathan Handwerker really did open his hot dog stand on Coney Island in 1916 — that part checks out. But the famous eating-contest legend, the one still printed on the event’s championship belt, came later. Press agents Morty Matz and Max Rosey invented the story in the early 1970s as a marketing tactic, adding embellishments over the years, including celebrity judges and a supposed winner named James Mullen. In 2010, Matz admitted it to the New York Times without much ceremony, saying flatly that they’d made it up. Nathan’s own spokesperson later confirmed to the same paper that the company has no evidence any contest happened before 1972, when the modern version began. The event has been run by Major League Eating since 1997, with competitors now required to qualify through preliminary contests and follow official judging rules.

Did Thomas Jefferson Invent Macaroni and Cheese?

No — and Monticello’s own historians say so directly. But what’s actually documented about Jefferson and pasta is more specific, and more interesting, than the myth.

Pasta already existed in the American colonies before Jefferson’s travels, and baked pasta dishes were already popular in France by the time he arrived there as a diplomat. So the popular claim that he single-handedly introduced the country to macaroni and cheese doesn’t hold up. What does hold up: in 1789, Jefferson had a pasta-making machine shipped from Naples, confirmed on a surviving packing list of goods sent to Monticello. A sketch in his own handwriting, held today at the Library of Congress, shows he studied exactly how the machine’s screw press worked. A dinner guest at the White House in 1802 recorded eating what he called “a pie called macaroni” — and wasn’t especially impressed by it. A macaroni and cheese recipe survives in Jefferson’s own hand: six eggs, two wine glasses of milk, two pounds of flour, with a technique detailed enough to make a modern chef take notice.

Most food historians credit the actual cooking to James Hemings, the enslaved chef who trained in Paris under Jefferson and ran his kitchen — likely the person who understood the dish well enough to make it work, whether or not he held the pen. It’s a case where correcting the myth doesn’t diminish the story. It just moves the credit to where it actually belongs.

What Does 250 Years of Checking the Record Actually Teach Us?

Some things about American history really did happen exactly the way we tell them. Some got invented later, because a tidy story is easier to sell than an uncertain one. And some sit in between — a popular version that’s wrong, and a real version that’s better, if anyone bothers to look.

It’s the same instinct we bring to every listing at Maine Home Connection: check the record, not the legend. What’s actually been done to a house, what a market has actually done over time, what a property is actually worth — the real version is usually knowable, and usually worth the extra look.

Until next time, Imagine More.