There simply is no credible historical evidence — letters, diaries, newspaper accounts, bills of sale — that Betsy Ross, then known as Elizabeth Claypoole, either made or had a hand in designing the American flag in 1777.  That said, her story is a very tenacious piece of fiction and popular American Myth that is constantly being reinforced in schools.  While Ross did make flags in Philadelphia in the late 1770s, we know that the SECOND FLAG DESIGN commissioned by Congress with thirteen red and white stripes and a blue canton with thirteen stars was designed by Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and designer of symbols, including state and national seals and the nation’s first currency.

Elizabeth Griscom Ross was a seamstress who ran an upholstery shop in Philadelphia with her husband, John Ross, Leepson said.  After her husband was killed in a gunpowder explosion at a munitions plant early in the Revolutionary War, Ross kept the shop going to feed her family. There are receipts showing she sewed ship’s flags, called ensigns, similar to the flag that flies over Fort Mifflin, for the Pennsylvania navy.  Ross also made a much more significant contribution to the war effort; she made musket cartridges.

There is evidence that Francis Hopkinson created the design.  Letters show he sent a bill to the Congress requesting payment for design work on several projects, including the flag. Officials acknowledged his work on the flag but refused to pay him, saying he’d had help with the design.   There was also the small problem that even if Congress accepted the debt, there was no money to pay the bill. 

So why is Ross credited with the flag?  The story of her making the flag appeared in the run-up to the national Centennial Celebration in 1876, 100 years after the first flag was supposedly sewn.  William Canby, Ross’s grandson, told the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia that his grandmother made the flag at George Washington’s behest. Canby’s sole evidence: stories told by deceased family members.

The myth grew in 1892 — 56 years after Ross died — when an artist named Charles Weisgerber learned about a shop in Philadelphia where the first flag was said to be sewn. Based on the recollections of Ross’s daughters, painted Ross sitting in her Philadelphia parlor with the sun beaming down on the flag in her lap.  The scene was pure invention and Weisgerber profited significantly from the Betsy Ross legend.

At the time, the suffragette movement was also starting and there was a need for female heroes. The story of Ross was a formidable woman who earned a place in history as a skilled seamstress and hard-working single mother who was widowed three times and managed a successful business, made her a larger-than-life celebrity.  The flag was also becoming a symbol of renotification after the Civil War.  Armed with her needles and shears, Betsy Ross was a super hero, and Francis Hopkinson was, well, a lawyer…

Ross is so beloved and so deeply embedded in the nation’s memory that somehow it seems unpatriotic, if not vaguely treasonous, to cast doubt on her story. The truth, however, is that Betsy Ross had nothing do with the popular flag that bears her name.  But of course, that is not even the first official American Flag.  The reality is that the Continental Army, and its various state’s militia, fought under a number of flags that eventually standardized when The Flag Act was signed into law by President George Washington on January 13, 1794. It changed the design of the flag to accommodate the admission into the Union of the states of Vermont and Kentucky. It provided for fifteen stripes as well as fifteen stars.   The flag would morph a number of times again as states were admitted and the configuration of the stars were altered until we get to the design we have today.

---

Want to have the
Regimental Brewmeister
at your site or event?

You can hire me.

https://colonialbrewer.com/yes-you-can-hire-me-for-your-event-or-site/