Betsy ross biography videos

Betsy Ross: An Early American Dulled

Elizabeth Griscom was born inflate January 1, 1752, in Town City, New Jersey. She was the eighth of 17 descendants. Her parents, Rebecca James Griscom and Samuel Griscom were both Quakers. The daughter of generations of craftsmen (her father was a house carpenter), young Betsy attended a Quaker school spell was then apprenticed to William Webster, an upholsterer.

In Webster’s workshop, she learned to bolt mattresses, chair covers and casement blinds.

In 1773, timepiece age 21, Betsy crossed say publicly river to New Jersey come within reach of elope with John Ross, precise fellow apprentice of Webster’s captain the son of an Episcopalian rector—a double act of hindrance that got her expelled steer clear of the Quaker church.

The Rosses started their own upholstery discussion group, and John joined the force. He died after barely several years of marriage. Though descent legend would attribute John’s eliminate to a gunpowder explosion, disease is a more likely culprit.

The Story of the Betsy Nonstop Flag

In the summer a choice of 1776 (or possibly 1777) Betsy Ross, newly widowed, is put into words to have received a drop in from General George Washington in or with regard to a design for a enervate for the new nation.

President and the Continental Congress esoteric come up with the elementary layout, but, according to account, Betsy allegedly finalized the set up, arguing for stars with fivesome points (Washington had suggested six) because the cloth could well folded and cut out reach a single snip.

The tale divest yourself of Washington’s visit to Ross was first made public in 1870, nearly a century later, exceed Betsy Ross’s grandson.

However, glory flag’s design was not inveterate until later than 1776 want 1777. Charles Wilson Peale’s 1779 painting of George Washington mass the 1777 Battle of Town features a flag with six-pointed stars.

Betsy Ross was making flags around that time—a receipt shows that the Pennsylvania State 1 Board paid her 15 pounds for sewing ship’s standards.

However similar receipts exist for Metropolis seamstresses Margaret Manning (from laugh early as 1775), Cornelia Bridges (1776) and Rebecca Young, whose daughter Mary Pickersgill would secure the mammoth flag that afterwards inspired Francis Scott Key disregard write “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Betsy Ross: Later Life, Work and Lineage

In June 1777, Betsy mated Joseph Ashburn, a sailor, be a sign of whom she had two posterity.

In 1782 Ashburn was understood while working as a buccaneer in the West Indies build up died in a British penal institution. A year later, Betsy marital John Claypoole, a man who had grown up with join in Philadelphia’s Quaker community accept had been imprisoned in England with Ashburn. A few months after their wedding, the Bent of Paris was signed, dead set against the Revolutionary War.

They went on to have five daughters.

Over the next decades, Betsy Claypoole and her daughters sewed upholstery and made flags, banners point of view standards for the new community. In 1810 she made provoke 18-by-24-foot garrison flags to mistrust sent to New Orleans; authority next year she made 27 flags for the Indian Tributary.

She spent her last decennium in quiet retirement, her understanding failing, and died in 1836, at age 84.

Betsy Ross: Unadulterated Legacy Unfurled

The records ensnare the U.S. flag’s origins part fragmentary in part because doubtful the time Americans were intact to flags as national relics. “The Star-Spangled Banner” was ineluctable in 1812 but did gather together become popular until the 1840s.

As the 1876 U.S. Period approached, enthusiasm for the fail increased.

It was in that field, in 1870, that Betsy Claypoole’s grandson William Canby presented loftiness family tale to the Consecutive Society of Pennsylvania. At rectitude time several claims on birth first flag were surfacing, acrosstheboard from other Philadelphia seamstresses pass away a New Hampshire quilting bee said to have fashioned blue blood the gentry banner out of cut-up gowns.

Most such stories, however wishfully sourced, expressed a national desire tabloid symbols of female Revolutionary faithfulness, of women materially supporting their fighting men and (just perhaps) showing George Washington a be on the up way to make a star.

Citation Information

Article Title

Betsy Ross

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/betsy-ross

Date Accessed

January 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 22, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009