Early American myths, folklore, legends, and tall tales, whether authentic or commercially fabricated, typically related to an actual historical event or national figure. Such stories often exaggerated the actions of individuals or the importance of events; mythologized the origins of the nation, its customs and culture; and related a specific moral or cautionary tale. American folklore initially gained popularity through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the form of regional storytelling, political campaigns, and folk songs. By the mid to late nineteenth century, following the Civil War (1861–1865) and prior to the national centennial in 1876, early American myths and tales began to be published in regular newspapers, popular magazines, biographical texts, and schoolbooks. The publication of folklore and stories influenced both the content of the tales being recounted and the wider culture that consumed them. In particular, the printing of early American mythology served to disseminate and standardize these tales across the country, quickly enshrining them into popular culture, national identity, and accepted public history. Tall tales, ranging from accounts of George Washington, Betsy Ross, Paul Revere, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Calamity Jane, and John Henry, and legends like the tale of the Headless Horseman continue to shape the American experience into the twenty-first century.
The trend toward publishing early American folklore arose in the mid to late nineteenth century, during a period in which the nation was seeking to define its national identity. The aftermath of the American Civil War (1861–1865), the upcoming centennial celebrations of 1876, rampant westward expansion, and an increasingly diverse immigrant population all contributed to the popular desire for a better understanding of the origins and purpose of the country during this period. At the same time, a national public school movement was underway, which created a need for textbooks that fostered a common understanding of the nation’s history and provided moralizing tales that students could relate to and learn from. In response to these pressures, newspapers, magazines, and early political biographies began incorporating components of these early myths and tales.
The transition of American folklore from oral tales to written and published accounts served to codify and standardize these stories by providing them with more structure, definition, and authority, and their dissemination throughout the nation worked to inscribe them into the national culture and historical memory, regardless of their veracity. With their publication in newspapers and magazines, such as Harper’s Monthly, and their later inclusion in children’s school texts and political biographies, such founding myths and folklore were slowly transitioned from creative stories into authoritative accounts that were disseminated nationally. As a result, a range of tales and stories attributed to the nation’s origins and founding fathers slowly gained credence amid the transition from regional folklore into published national histories, biographies, and scholarly fact. Subsequently, these texts served to unify American history through the creation of a common, simplified image of the past in the presentation of a moral and magnificent national experience. Indeed, owing to their popularity, many of these tales remained unchallenged in national culture until the twentieth century when researchers began careful reexaminations of such myths.
One example of the influence of publications on the creation of popular national history can be found in Mason Locke Weems’s biography of George Washington, The Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington (1800). A number of factors have contributed to the body of mythology surrounding George Washington (1732–1799), but the vast majority of the myths associated with him can be traced to Parson Weems’s text on the first president, which was published shortly after Washington’s death in 1800. Weems’s biography presented the first president as a hero through the use of entertaining moralizing stories, which freely intertwined myth and history, highlighting Washington’s honesty, charity, humility, wisdom, common sense, and virtuousness. Given that these stories were both easily recognizable and popular, many of them, including the stories of young Washington and the cherry tree, Washington tossing a silver dollar over the Potomac River, and the president praying at Valley Forge have since been enshrined into national folklore and reiterated by subsequent authors and scholars. Owing to Weems’s work, later publications like the renowned McGuffey’s Readers and Frank Shay’s Here’s Audacity! American Legendary Heroes (1930) proliferated and freely used such folklore as the basis for their educational texts. As a result, nineteenth-century school children across the nation were taught Weems’s narratives as fact, resulting in the convolution of notable events and persons for generations. Such exaggerated and fictional accounts proliferated and remained as popular truths well into the twentieth century. These publications have since been credited for determining much of America’s moral perspective, literary interests, sense of national destiny, and understanding of the American experience. Indeed, despite twentieth-century historians and scholars critiquing Weems’s tales as lacking credible sources, the proliferation of myths about George Washington throughout the nation has nonetheless continued.
Another example of how American folklore has become part of popular history is the story of Betsy Ross. According to American legend, Betsy Ross (1752–1836) was the flag maker who was commissioned by George Washington to make the first American flag with thirteen stripes and stars. This tale was originally recounted by Ross’s grandson, William Canby, in 1870 to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Ross’s position as a seamstress and flag maker for the Navy in Philadelphia, as well as her close social relationship with several of the nation’s founding fathers, like George Washington, were used to support the story. As a result, Ross’s tale was quickly repeated and standardized across the nation in publications such as Harper’s Monthly (1873), school textbooks like McGuffey’s Readers, in Charles Weisgerber’s painting Birth of Our Nation (1893), and later affirmed in George Canby’s The Evolution of the American Flag (1909). The legend of Betsy Ross sewing the nation’s first flag was also publicly reiterated during the Centennial celebrations in 1876. While the story of Ross did not go unquestioned, it has nonetheless been widely reiterated by historians and textbook publishers in an effort to assert national symbols, endorse the moral of the tale, and promote the contributions of women during the American Revolution. As a result of the perpetuation of this story, Ross has become one of the best-known American icons of the period.
Another example of the transition of early American mythology into popular fact is the publication of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” and its influence on the historical accounts of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. This work is clearly inspired by the historical events of Paul Revere’s ride from Boston to Lexington, Massachusetts, on April 18, 1775, during which he warned of the coming of the British Army. However, it was Longfellow’s poem that both enshrined and popularized the myth of Revere calling out “The British are coming,” which has subsequently been taken as historical truth.
As these examples have shown, early American myths, folklore, and legends typically related to actual historical events or national figures, but they often presented exaggerated accounts that were used to glorify the event, individual, or national image, or to present a particular moral. Folklore became part of the national narrative following publication and dissemination of these myths in newspapers, magazines, and national school texts during the late nineteenth century, and many of these tales still remain part of popular culture in the United States today.
Sean Morton
See also Founding Myths; Ride of Paul Revere; Ross, Betsy; Tall Tales; Weems, Parson
Further Reading
Coffin, Tristram, and Hennig Cohen, eds. 1966. Folklore in America: Tales, Songs, Superstitions, Proverbs, Riddles, Games, Folk Drama and Folk Festivals. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Furstenberg, Francois. 2007. In the Name of the Father: Washington’s Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation. New York: Penguin Books.
Leeming, David, and Jake Page. 1999. Myths, Legends, and Folktales of America: An Anthology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sullivan, Dolores P. 1994. William Holmes McGuffey: Schoolmaster to the Nation, Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
Thompson, Stith. 1977. The Folktale. Berkeley: University of California Press.