Local historian Ed Mauger has heard all the tales and spent the last 11 years translating them.

Mauger (pronounced like "major") isn't your typical tour guide. He doesn't wear a ranger hat or colonial stockings, and he's not a squeaky-voiced teen trying to charm your grandparents for a tip. He's self-employed, and his under-the-radar Philadelphia on Foot walking tours describe the founding fathers' private history—evidenced by the writings, portraits and buildings they left behind—in ways that other tours can't touch.

The missing link? Character.

"I wanted to know the people and their stories," says Mauger, who once worked as an associate dean at Rutgers-Camden and published the book Philadelphia Then & Now in 2002. "Philly deserved better."

We've all seen George Washington, chest brazenly puffed as he crossed the Delaware, but Mauger shows another side of Washington: an introvert, a shy man who felt awkward at parties and rarely initiated conversation. He exposes Betsy Ross, not as the grandmotherly seamstress so often depicted, but as a "23-year-old spitfire" who purchased a church pew next to Washington in an effort to win government contracts. He points out that Benjamin Franklin, who commissioned a statue to portray him as an 18th-century Socrates, did not hide his merit behind modesty.

Mauger's tours are informal and personal. With childlike enthusiasm, he's anxious to squeeze each drop of detail out of the city's historical sites. "I was fascinated by the ambiance of the architecture in Philadelphia," he says. When visiting the Powell House (244 S. Third St.) last week, Mauger nearly walked out the front door three separate times before remembering another story, each time leading his group back inside. He even lets you behind the scenes of the tourism industry, exposing the politics of preserving landmarks and explaining the authenticity of certain Franklin impersonators over others.

By appointment only, Philadelphia on Foot is just the thing for the history lovers and tourists who want a little more out of their trip than those mother-quacking whistles the Ride the Ducks company passes out.

"I like to think of it as if you were a time traveler," says Mauger. "If you were in the fifth century B.C., you would go to Athens. If you were in the first century, you'd go to Rome or Jerusalem. And if you were in the 18th century, you'd go to Philadelphia."

At $15-$20 a head, Mauger's tours are cheaper than college. Here are three of his hit-the-pavement favorites:

The Quack and the Dead tour Visit America's first hospital and oldest operating room, but try not to imagine how much bloodletting took place there.

To register for one of Mauger's Philadelphia on Foot tours, call 1-800-340-9869 or visit www.ushistory.org/moremauger/index.htm.