One observation, however. The word “journeyman” and comments like “becoming a master artisan was a long and difficult process that started early in a boy’s life,”can ignore the role that female artisans played in the city’s economic life. For instance, Mary Smith and Sarah Milton, the women who lived in what is now the museum house on Elfreth’s Alley, were skilled mantua makers, who employed apprentices of their own. A few years after them, there were also two female shoemakers living and working on the Alley. Finally, the most iconic female artisan in Philadelphia was, of course, Betsy Griscom Ross, who was apprenticed to an upholsterer for several years, before opening her own business with her husband and fellow apprentice, John Ross.

To the journeymen AND journeywomen of Philadelphia, I say “Huzzah!”