White flag with blue stripes and red stars11/15/2023 ![]() The “Our Flag” pamphlet tells the story of “Old Glory” and educates on flag etiquette. He sent the Continental Congress an invoice in 1780, asking for a cask of wine in reimbursement for designing the Great Seal and “the flag of the United States of America,” but Congress declined to pay him for his services. It seems much more likely that Francis Hopkinson, a naval flag designer who signed the Declaration of Independence, also designed the Stars and Stripes. Unfortunately for this very romantic tale, there is little to no factual evidence to support it, starting with the fact that there does not appear to have been a committee assigned to commission a flag. Weisgerber, whose 1893 work “Birth of Our Nation’s Flag,” in which Betsy Ross sits sewing the flag while George Washington and two other gentlemen watch. Painters added fuel to the fire, in particular Charles H. The story spread via newspapers and magazines, and then in 1873, Harper’s Weekly, one of the most important publications in the country, repeated Canby’s story as fact, adding the considerable weight of its journalistic credibility to the tale. Imagined meeting between George Washington and Betsy Ross He said that Ross had consented and had suggested changing the six-pointed stars that the committee asked for to five-pointed stars, which the committee agreed to. Canby stated that a committee led by General George Washington visited his grandmother at her upholstery shop in Philadelphia and asked her to sew the first national flag. flag and, indeed, had a hand in designing it appeared in 1870, when William Canby, her grandson, presented a paper titled “The History of the Flag of the United States” to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The story that Betsy Ross sewed the first U.S. She lived a long, productive life and apparently was respected and well thought of in her community. Second, she ran her business herself while managing her home and raising her family, at a time when women were usually strictly confined to the home. patriot who lost two husbands to the American cause while she was still quite a young woman. ![]() flag, but she is notable for several reasons, nonetheless. She died in 1836 at the age of 84, having borne seven children.ĭespite the widespread and very popular urban legend, Betsy Ross almost certainly did not sew the first U.S. The exact building where Betsy Ross ran her upholstery business has never been identified for certain. She ran her business with her husband and a succession of other relatives, including her daughters, granddaughters and nieces. Throughout the war, Betsy Ross sewed tents for the Continental army and pennants for Pennsylvania’s navy. They ran an upholstery business and joined the Free Quakers, a group who supported the American Revolution and thus were at odds with the Quakers’ official pacifist stance. Ross married a third time in 1783, to John Claypoole, who had known Ashburn in prison. She married Joseph Ashburn in 1777, but the British captured the merchant marine brigantine he was serving on, and Ashburn died in prison in England in 1782. By this time, Betsy Ross was running her own sewing business in Philadelphia. Sadly, John Ross was killed very early in the American Revolution in 1776. Many prominent American patriots, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, attended services at Christ Church as well. The Rosses attended Christ Church, an important Episcopal church in the Old City of Philadelphia, where John Ross’ father was an assistant rector. The pair eloped, which caused the Society of Friends to expel Griscom because John Ross was a Protestant. She apprenticed to an upholsterer in Philadelphia in 1773, where she met another young apprentice, John Ross, who came from a prominent family that included one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence. Her family were members of the Society of Friends (the Quakers), so Betsy grew up in that faith and was educated in Quaker schools. The woman who became Betsy Ross was born on New Year’s Day in 1752, the eighth of 17 children, in Gloucester City, New Jersey, and named Elizabeth Griscom. ![]() Betsy Ross’s pew at Christ Church, Philadelphia
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