A Maryland father who says Betsy Ross is his great-great-great-great-grandmother is pedaling through all thirteen original colonies this summer, and when he rolls into Philadelphia on Flag Day, he will bring a family heirloom that has sat beside kitchen counters for generations: the sewing table historians believe Ross herself once used.
Eric Conrad started what he calls the "Original 13 Odyssey" last month, a 3,600-mile, 60-day bike tour tracing the original capitals and colonial states down the Eastern Seaboard. On June 14, he plans to stop at the Betsy Ross House in Old City, Philadelphia, where the table will be formally donated and unveiled, CBS News Philadelphia reported.
It is one of those stories that cuts against the modern grain, a private citizen spending his own time and effort to honor the founding generation, asking nothing from a government grant or a corporate sponsor, simply because he thinks Americans need to remember what their forebears sacrificed.
Conrad told CBS News Philadelphia that the sewing table had been handed from one generation to the next inside his family for as long as anyone could remember. He grew up around it.
"I've always been used to seeing an old sewing table that belonged to her and pulling drawers open and seeing the little piece of material and bobbins and things like that."
His mother kept the table beside her kitchen. When she died, it passed to Conrad, who placed it in the same spot, right next to his own kitchen. Now he is giving it to the Betsy Ross House so the public can see it.
One drawer is missing. The Betsy Ross House team says historians believe Ross used that drawer as a portable sewing basket, carrying her supplies from job to job. The museum staff is working with woodworkers to match the missing piece and restore the table for display.
This is not Conrad's first long-distance ride with a patriotic purpose. In 1976, for the nation's bicentennial, he completed a 44-day, 3,200-mile trip, about 85 miles a day, using nothing but paper maps.
"I did a 44-day trip, 3200 miles, rode about 85 miles a day. No phones, no cellphones, no internet, all paper maps."
Nearly half a century later, he is back in the saddle. Conrad described the current journey simply.
"I'm going to the original 13 states. I'm going to the original capitals, and so I'm going down the coast, mainly."
He has already passed through North Carolina, where a photo shows him at Tryon Palace. His schedule puts him in Philadelphia twice, once on Flag Day and again on the Fourth of July. Conrad calls the double visit "twice in a lifetime."
At a moment when debates over American flags and national symbols keep surfacing in city halls and statehouses, Conrad's ride is a reminder that ordinary citizens often do more for civic memory than the officials elected to safeguard it.
Conrad was blunt about his motivation. He did not frame the ride as a fitness challenge or a social-media stunt. He framed it as a duty.
"We need to remind people what they fought for. Betsy and her husband all had gone through the war and such an effort to get freedom."
That kind of plain talk about the Revolution, about the cost of liberty and the people who bore it, has grown rarer in public life. School curricula trim the founders. Cultural institutions hedge their language. Politicians treat patriotic symbols as props for fundraising emails rather than objects of genuine reverence.
Conrad's approach is the opposite. He inherited a tangible link to one of the most recognized women in American history, kept it by his kitchen for years, and decided it belonged where the public could see it, inside the small brick house on Arch Street where Ross is believed to have sewn the first American flag.
Some will note that the independent documentation does not include evidence of the table's provenance or of Conrad's genealogy beyond his own claims. Those are fair questions for historians and curators to sort out. The Betsy Ross House team is clearly treating the donation as authentic, and they are the professionals responsible for the collection.
What is not in dispute is the gesture itself. A man rode thousands of miles on a bicycle, at his own expense, to hand over a family heirloom to a museum, because he believed the country needed to see it.
While some elected leaders claim American democracy is collapsing, Conrad is quietly pedaling through the states where it was born, carrying a piece of furniture that connects the present to 1776 in the most literal way possible.
Big institutions spend millions telling Americans what to think about their own history. Conrad spent nothing beyond bike tires and road food. He did not issue a press release demanding attention. CBS News Philadelphia caught up with him ahead of the unveiling in Old City, and he told them what he was doing and why.
The ride will continue after Philadelphia. Conrad plans to finish his tour of all thirteen original colonies, covering the full 3,600 miles over 60 days. Whether he makes every stop on schedule is between him, the weather, and the road.
Meanwhile, the federal government continues to expand at a pace that would have baffled the founders Conrad is honoring. The Trump administration recently swore in the largest class of immigration judges in DOJ history, 82 at once, a sign of how far the machinery of government has grown since thirteen colonies governed themselves with quill pens and hand-stitched flags.
None of that diminishes what Conrad is doing. If anything, it sharpens the contrast. The sewing table is small. The ride is long. The point is simple: freedom was earned by real people who used real tools, and forgetting that is a choice this country does not have to make.
In an era when powerful institutions routinely obscure the truth about far more recent events, one man on a bicycle is doing more to preserve American memory than most agencies with billion-dollar budgets.
Sometimes the best argument for the country is a guy who just gets on his bike and rides.
