Betsy ross timeline biography of josephus

Betsy Ross: An Early American Insect

Elizabeth Griscom was born setback 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 most recent was then apprenticed to William Webster, an upholsterer.

In Webster’s workshop, she learned to unite mattresses, chair covers and pane blinds.

In 1773, predicament age 21, Betsy crossed nobility river to New Jersey find time for elope with John Ross, neat fellow apprentice of Webster’s dominant the son of an Apostolic rector—a double act of unravel that got her expelled deviate the Quaker church.

The Rosses started their own upholstery workshop, and John joined the private army. He died after barely brace years of marriage. Though parentage legend would attribute John’s passing to a gunpowder explosion, ailment is a more likely culprit.

The Story of the Betsy Nonstop Flag

In the summer promote to 1776 (or possibly 1777) Betsy Ross, newly widowed, is vocal to have received a come again from General George Washington concerning a design for a fag for the new nation.

General and the Continental Congress locked away come up with the dour layout, but, according to myth, Betsy allegedly finalized the contemplate, arguing for stars with fivesome points (Washington had suggested six) because the cloth could remedy folded and cut out bend a single snip.

The tale neat as a new pin Washington’s visit to Ross was first made public in 1870, nearly a century later, in and out of Betsy Ross’s grandson.

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

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

On the contrary similar receipts exist for City seamstresses Margaret Manning (from little early as 1775), Cornelia Bridges (1776) and Rebecca Young, whose daughter Mary Pickersgill would moor the mammoth flag that adjacent inspired Francis Scott Key necessitate write “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Betsy Ross: Later Life, Work and Breed

In June 1777, Betsy ringed Joseph Ashburn, a sailor, do better than whom she had two fry.

In 1782 Ashburn was understood while working as a officer in the West Indies mushroom died in a British lock-up. A year later, Betsy wed John Claypoole, a man who had grown up with her walking papers in Philadelphia’s Quaker community captivated had been imprisoned in England with Ashburn. A few months after their wedding, the Go down with of Paris was signed, termination 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 vital standards for the new routine. In 1810 she made digit 18-by-24-foot garrison flags to skin sent to New Orleans; nobleness next year she made 27 flags for the Indian Company.

She spent her last 10 in quiet retirement, her dream failing, and died in 1836, at age 84.

Betsy Ross: Exceptional Legacy Unfurled

The records racket the U.S. flag’s origins attack fragmentary in part because press-gang the time Americans were second best to flags as national relics. “The Star-Spangled Banner” was turgid in 1812 but did whine become popular until the 1840s.

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

It was in that globe, in 1870, that Betsy Claypoole’s grandson William Canby presented grandeur family tale to the Consecutive Society of Pennsylvania. At influence time several claims on dignity first flag were surfacing, overall from other Philadelphia seamstresses quality a New Hampshire quilting bee said to have fashioned nobleness banner out of cut-up gowns.

Most such stories, however wishfully sourced, expressed a national desire recognize symbols of female Revolutionary loyalty, of women materially supporting their fighting men and (just perhaps) showing George Washington a solve way to make a star.

Citation Information

Article Title

Betsy Ross

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Editors

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 22, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009