:Betsy Ross

Betsy Ross was born on January 1, 1752, to Samuel Griscom (1717–1793) and Rebecca James Griscom (1721–1793) on the Griscom family farm in Gloucester City, New Jersey.{{cite book |last1=Harker |first1=John Balderston |title=Betsy Ross's Five Pointed Star: Elizabeth Claypoole, Quaker Flag Maker--A Historical Perspective |date=2005 |publisher=Canmore Press |location=Melbourne Beach, FL |page=28}}{{cite book |last1=Timmins |first1=William D. |title=Betsy Ross: The Griscom Legacy |date=1983 |publisher=Salem County, N.J., Cultural and Heritage Commission |location=Salem County, N. J. |page=127}} Ross was the eighth of seventeen children, of whom only nine survived childhood. A sister, Sarah (1745–1747), and brother, William (1748–1749), died before Elizabeth ("Betsy") was born (another sister, Sarah Griscom Donaldson (1749–1785), was named after the earlier deceased Sarah). Ross was just five years old when her sister Martha (1754–1757) died, and another sister, Ann (1757–1759), only lived to the age of two. Brothers Samuel I (1753–1756) and Samuel II (1758–1761) both died at age three. Two others, twins, brother Joseph (1759–1762) and sister Abigail (1759–1762), died in one of the frequent smallpox epidemics in the autumn of 1762.Marla Miller, Betsy Ross and the Making of America, p. 45.{{cite web|title=Betsy Ross: Her Life|url=http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/flaglife.html|website=ushistory.org|publisher=Independence Hall Association|access-date=October 17, 2014|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141013010838/http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/flaglife.html|archive-date=October 13, 2014}} Ross grew up in a household where the plain dress and strict discipline of the Quakers dominated.{{cite book |first=William C. |last=Kashatus |title=Historic Philadelphia: The City, Symbols & Patriots, 1681-1800 |chapter=Betsy Ross: Seamstress of a Revolution |date=November 29, 1992 |publisher=University Press of America |isbn=9780819187697 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=35_yNkdXM0cC&pg=PA101 |access-date=November 29, 2023 }} She learned to sew from a great aunt, Sarah Elizabeth Ann Griscom. Ross's great-grandfather, Andrew Griscom, a member of the Quakers and a carpenter, had emigrated in 1680 from England.

After her schooling at a Quaker-run state school, Ross's father apprenticed her to an upholsterer named William Webster.{{cite web|last=Kashatus|first=William C.|work=ushistory.org|date=June 2005|url=http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/news/state0605.htm|title=Seamstress for a Revolution|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090918145642/http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/news/state0605.htm |archive-date=September 18, 2009|access-date=February 2, 2010}}

{{See also|Betsy Ross flag}}

File:RossBetsy.jpg, by Edward Percy Moran, {{circa|1917}}]]

File:Betsy Ross flag.svg

Research conducted by the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., notes that the story of Betsy Ross making the first U.S. flag for General George Washington entered into the U.S. consciousness about the time of the 1876 centennial celebrations, with the Centennial Exposition then scheduled to be held in Philadelphia.The Star-Spangled Banner, by Lonn Taylor, Kathleen M. Kendrick, and Jeffrey L Brodie, Smithsonian Books/Collins Publishing (New York: 2008) In 1870, Ross's grandson, William J. Canby, presented a research paper to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in which he claimed that his grandmother had "made with her hands the first flag" of the United States.Buescher, John. [http://www.teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/23852 "All Wrapped up in the Flag"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110923065711/http://www.teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/23852 |date=September 23, 2011 }} [http://www.teachinghistory.org Teachinghistory.org] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110711054633/http://teachinghistory.org/ |date=July 11, 2011 }}, accessed August 21, 2011. Canby said he first obtained this information from his aunt Clarissa Sydney (Claypoole) Wilson in 1857, 20 years after Ross's death. Canby dates the historic episode based on Washington's journey to Philadelphia, in the late spring of 1776, a year before the Second Continental Congress passed the first Flag Act of June 14, 1777.{{Cite web|url=http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/more/canby.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150220070301/http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/more/canby.htm|url-status=dead|title="The History of the Flag of the United States" by William Canby|archive-date=February 20, 2015|website=www.ushistory.org}}

In the 2008 book The Star-Spangled Banner: the Making of an American Icon, Smithsonian Institution experts point out that Canby's recounting of the event appealed to patriotic Americans then eager for stories about the Revolution and its heroes and heroines. Betsy Ross was promoted as a patriotic role model for young girls and a symbol of women's contributions to American history.What About Betsy Ross, pp. 68–69. American historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich further explored this line of enquiry in a 2007 article, "How Betsy Ross Became Famous: Oral Tradition, Nationalism, and the Invention of History".{{cite web |url=http://common-place.org/vol-08/no-01/ulrich |title=How Betsy Ross Became Famous |access-date=February 15, 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090404104129/http://www.common-place.org/vol-08/no-01/ulrich/ |archive-date=April 4, 2009 }}

Ross was merely one of several flag makers in Philadelphia (such as Rebecca Young, who is historically documented to have made the earlier Grand Union Flag of 1775–76, with the British Union Jack of the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew, in the upper corner canton and 13 alternating red and white stripes for the "United Colonies") for the Continental Army, along with many other ships' colors, banners, and flags which were advertised in local newspapers.

Rebecca Young's daughter Mary Young Pickersgill (1776–1857) made the flag of 15 stars and stripes in 1813, begun at her house and finished on the floor of a nearby brewery, delivered to the commander of the fort the year before the British attack of September 12–14, 1814, on Fort McHenry in Baltimore, during the War of 1812, (receiving a government-issued receipt for the work of two flags, a large {{convert|30 by 42|foot}} "garrison flag" and a smaller "storm flag"), then seen by Francis Scott Key (1779–1843) and which inspired him to write the poem which later became the national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner. Pickersgill's small 1793 rowhouse is still preserved in East Baltimore's Old Town neighborhood at East Pratt and Albemarle Streets and is known as the "Flag House & Star-Spangled Banner Museum". Occasionally over the decades, there has been some controversy and disagreement between the relative merits and historical accuracies of the two flag-making traditions and historical sites in Philadelphia and Baltimore. It is thought that Ross's only contribution to the flag design was to change the 6-pointed stars to the easier 5-pointed stars.Miller, 176 Scholars, however, accept the claim by Francis Hopkinson—a member of the Continental Congress who designed most of the elements of the Great Seal of the United States—that he created designs for the early U.S. flag.{{cite journal|last1=Williams|first1=Earl P. Jr.|title=Did Francis Hopkinson Design Two Flags?|journal=NAVA News|date=October 2012|issue=216|pages=7–9|url=http://www.flagguys.com/pdf/NAVANews_2012_no216.pdf|access-date=February 16, 2017|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170209064051/http://www.flagguys.com/pdf/NAVANews_2012_no216.pdf|archive-date=February 9, 2017}} Hopkinson submitted letters to Congress in 1780 requesting payment for his designs. Hopkinson was the only person to make such a claim in the Revolutionary War era.Williams (2012), pp. 7–9.

File:Pennsylvania Navy Ensign.svg

File:American Flag House 1912.jpg and with the then current grave site of Betsy Ross.]]

While Griscom was apprenticed to upholsterer William Webster, she met John Ross, a nephew of George Ross Jr, a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence. John's parents were Sarah Leach and the Rev. Aeneas Ross, a Church of England (later Episcopal) priest and assistant rector at the historic city parish of Christ Church. Griscom and Ross eloped in 1773, marrying at Hugg's Tavern in Gloucester City, New Jersey.{{cite web|url=http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/HistRC/hits?docNum=BT2310004372&tab=32&locID=cfsc_remote&origSearch=true&hdb=US&t=RK&s=1&r=d&items=0&secondary=true&o=&sortOrder=&n=10&l=dB&sgPhrase=false&c=1&tabMap=114&bucket=bio&SU=betsy+ross|title=Betsy Ross|work=History Resource Center|publisher=Cengage|location=United States|first=George H.|last=Genzmer|access-date=June 1, 2009}}

The marriage caused a split from her Griscom family and meant her expulsion from the Quaker congregation. The young couple soon started their own upholstery business and later joined Christ Church, where their fellow congregants occasionally included visiting colony of Virginia militia regimental commander, colonel, and soon-to-be-general George Washington (of the newly organized Continental Army) and his family from their home Anglican parish of Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia, near his Mount Vernon estate on the Potomac River, along with many other visiting notaries and delegates in future years to the soon-to-be-convened Continental Congress and the political/military leadership of the colonial rebellion. Betsy and John Ross had no children.

The American Revolutionary War broke out when the Rosses had been married for two years. As a member of the local Pennsylvania Provincial Militia and its units from the city of Philadelphia, John Ross was assigned to guard munitions. He died in 1775. According to one legend, he was killed by a gunpowder explosion, but family sources provide doubts about this claim.Marla Miller, Betsy Ross and the Making of America, pp. 151–152 The 24-year-old Elizabeth ("Betsy") continued working in the upholstery business repairing uniforms and making tents, blankets, and stuffed paper tube cartridges with musket balls for prepared packaged ammunition in 1779 for the Continental Army.{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/books/review/Ulrich-t.html?pagewanted=all |title=Book Review – Betsy Ross and the Making of America – By Marla R. Miller|author=Laurel Thatcher Ulrich |date=May 7, 2010 |work=The New York Times |access-date=February 6, 2011 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131114000659/http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/books/review/Ulrich-t.html?pagewanted=all |archive-date=November 14, 2013 }}

There is speculation that Ross was the "beautiful young widow" who distracted Carl von Donop in Mount Holly, New Jersey, after the Battle of Iron Works Hill, thus keeping his forces out of the crucial "turning-of-the-tide" Battle of Trenton on the morning of December 26, 1776, in which Hessian soldiers were defeated after the crossing of the Delaware River.{{cite book | last = Fischer | first = David Hackett | author-link = David Hackett Fischer | title = Washington's Crossing | publisher = Oxford University Press | year = 2004 | location = New York | isbn = 0-19-517034-2| title-link = Washington's Crossing (book) }}

On June 15, 1777, she married her second husband, mariner Joseph Ashburn. In 1780, Ashburn's ship was captured by a Royal Navy frigate and he was charged with treason (for being of British ancestry—naturalization to American colonial citizenship was not recognized) and imprisoned at Old Mill Prison in Plymouth, England. During this time, their first daughter, Zilla, died at the age of nine months and their second daughter, Eliza, was born. Ashburn died in the British jail.

Three years later, in May 1783, she married John Claypoole, who had earlier met Joseph Ashburn in the English Old Mill Prison and had informed Ross of her husband's circumstances and death. John Claypoole's diary and family Bible was rediscovered 240 years later in June 2020.{{cite news |last1=Pompilio |first1=Natalie |title=Betsy Ross's husband's diary turned up in a garage. Here's what it tells us about the flagmaker |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/07/11/betsy-ross-husband-diary/ |newspaper=The Washington Post |access-date=July 13, 2021}}

The couple had five daughters: Clarissa, Susanna, Jane, Rachel, and Harriet (who died in infancy). With the birth of their second daughter Susanna in 1786, they moved to a larger house on Philadelphia's Second Street, settling down to a peaceful post-war existence, as Philadelphia prospered as the temporary national capital (1790–1800) of the newly independent United States of America, with the first president, George Washington, his vice president, John Adams, and the convening members of the new federal government and the U.S. Congress.

In 1793, her mother, father, and sister Deborah Griscom Bolton (1743–1793) all died in another severe epidemic of yellow fever, a disease found in the 19th century to be spread by infected mosquitoes. After two decades of poor health, John Claypoole died in 1817. Ross continued the upholstery business for 10 more years. Upon retirement, she moved in with her daughter Susanna Claypoole (1786–1875), in a section of Abington Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, "Betsy Ross Lived in Abington", [http://www.rydal-meadowbrook.org/history-betsy-ross Rydal-Meadowbrook Civic Association] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131013164629/http://www.rydal-meadowbrook.org/history-betsy-ross |date=October 13, 2013 }} while Susanna's older sister Clarissa (1785–1864) took over their mother's business back in the city.

File:Betsy Ross burial site in Mount Moriah Cemetery.jpg erected a flagpole to commemorate the burial site of Betsy Ross in Mount Moriah Cemetery]]

Ross, by then completely blind, spent her last three years living with her middle Claypoole daughter Jane (1792–1873) in Philadelphia, which was rapidly growing and industrializing. On Saturday, January 30, 1836, 60 years after the Declaration of Independence, Betsy Ross died at age 84. She was survived by one daughter with John Ashburn, Eliza, and four daughters with John Claypoole: Clarissa, Susanna, Jane, and Rachel, and one sister, Hannah Griscom Levering (1755–1836), who herself died about 11 months later.Miller, Marla R. Betsy Ross and the Making of America, p. 342. Macmillan, 2010.

The so-called Betsy Ross House is a popular tourist site in Philadelphia,Andrew Carr, "The Betsy Ross House", American History, vol. 37.3, (August 2002): 23. but it is still a matter of historical academic dispute whether she actually lived there,[http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/prove239.html "Was This Her House?"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060215001421/http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/prove239.html |date=February 15, 2006 }} at UShistory.org. as evidence indicates she actually lived from 1776 to 1779 in a house next door that was torn down after the remaining house was designated.{{cite book |last1=Leepson |first1=Marc |url=http://marcleepson.com/flagbiography/index.html |title=Flag: An American Biography |date=2007 |publisher=Thomas Dunne Books |location=New York |page=48}}{{Cite book |last=Federal Writers' Project |url=https://archive.org/details/philadelphiaguid00fedemiss |title=Philadelphia: A Guide to the Nation's Birthplace |date=1937 |publisher=The Telegraph Press |series=The American Guide Series |location=Harrisburg, Pennsylvania |page=343}}

Ross' body was first interred at the Free Quaker burial grounds on North Fifth Street in Philadelphia. In 1856, the remains of Ross and her third husband John Claypoole were moved from the Free Quaker Burying Ground to Mount Moriah Cemetery.{{Cite news|url=https://strangeremains.com/2016/06/30/rediscovering-betsy-ross-bones/|title=Rediscovering Betsy Ross' bones|date=July 1, 2016|work=Strange Remains|access-date=July 21, 2018|language=en-US}} The practice of cemeteries purchasing the remains of famous historical individuals was common in order to drive additional business. The Daughters of the American Revolution erected a flagpole at the site of her grave in her memory.{{cite book |last1=Webster |first1=J.P. |title=Vanishing Philadelphia: Ruins of the Quaker City |date=2014 |publisher=The History Press |location=Charleston, South Carolina |isbn=978-1-62585-134-5 |page=152 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MhV3CQAAQBAJ&q=mount+moriah+cemetery+philadelphia |access-date=September 25, 2020}}

In 1975, in preparation for the American Bicentennial, city leaders ordered the remains moved to the courtyard of the Betsy Ross House. However, cemetery workers found no remains beneath her tombstone. Bones found elsewhere in the family plot were deemed to be hers and were reinterred in the current grave visited by tourists at the Betsy Ross House.{{cite web |last1=Cheney |first1=Jim |title=Exploring Philadelphia's Overgrown Burial Grounds: Mount Moriah Cemetery |url=https://uncoveringpa.com/exploring-moriah-cemetery-philadelphia |website=www.uncoveringpa.com |date=May 11, 2015 |access-date=August 23, 2019}}

The Betsy Ross Bridge, connecting Philadelphia with Pennsauken Township, New Jersey, across the Delaware River is named in her honor.

Biographer Marla Miller argues that Ross' legacy should not be about a single flag, but rather what her story tells us about working women and men during the American Revolution.{{cite magazine |last=Miller |first=Marla R. |date=June 2016 |title=Citizen Seamstress |magazine=The American Legion |location=Indianapolis |volume=180 |pages=32–36 }}

Betsy Ross School in Mahwah, New Jersey is named for her.{{Cite web |title=Betsy Ross School / Homepage |url=https://www.mahwah.k12.nj.us/Domain/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mahwah.k12.nj.us%2Fsite%2Fdefault.aspx%3FDomainID%3D13 |access-date=February 23, 2023 |website=www.mahwah.k12.nj.us |language=en}}

File:BetsyRossBicentennial-1952.jpg, issued in 1952]]

On January 1, 1952, the U.S. Post Office issued a commemorative postage stamp to honor the 200th anniversary of her birth. It shows her presenting the new 13-striped, 13-starred flag to George Washington, with Robert Morris, and George Ross present. The design was taken from a painting by Charles H. Weisberger, one of the founders and first custodian of the Memorial Association, who has cared for and operated the Ross House. This was issued when the Ross legend was still strong and accepted by many of the American public and before additional historical and academic scrutiny.Smithsonian National Postal Museum

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{{reflist}}

• {{cite web |title=Betsy Ross Issue |publisher=Smithsonian National Postal Museum |url=http://arago.si.edu/index.asp?con=1&cmd=1&tid=2028930 |access-date=May 29, 2014 |ref=Smithsonian}}

• Chanko, Pamela. Easy Reader Biographies: Betsy Ross: The Story of Our Flag (Easy Reader Biographies). 2007.
• Cohon, Rhody, Stacia Deutsch, and Guy Francis. Betsy Ross' Star (Blast to the Past). 2007.
• Cox, Vicki. Betsy Ross: A Flag For A Brand New Nation (Leaders of the American Revolution). 2005.
• Harker, John B. and Museum Images & Exhibits. Betsy Ross's Five Pointed Star. 2005.
• Harkins, Susan Sales and William H. Harkins. Betsy Ross (Profiles in American History) (Profiles in American History). 2006.
• Leepson, Marc. Flag: An American Biography (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2005).
• Loewen, James W., Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. 1995
• Mader, Jan. Betsy Ross (First Biographies). 2007.
• Mara, Wil. Betsy Ross (Rookie Biographies). 2006.
• {{cite book |last=Miller |first=Marla R. |title=Betsy Ross and the Making of America |year=2010 |publisher=Henry Holt and Company, LLC |location=New York |isbn=978-0-8050-8297-5 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780805082975 }}

{{Portal|United States|Biography}}

{{Commons category|Betsy Ross}}

• Flag: An American Biography [https://web.archive.org/web/20140517085257/http://flagbiography.com/ website]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20050520092251/http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/ Betsy Ross Homepage] from ushistory.org

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