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| Flag Committee visiting Betsy Ross |
Elizabeth Ross was an obscure Philadelphia upholsterer and occasional flag maker until 1870, when her grandson, William Canby, presented a paper before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
The nation’s centennial
celebration was approaching, and Canby’s story arrived at just the right time.
America had a new hero.
Her name was Betsy Ross.
As the story goes,
Betsy wasn’t just a flag maker. She was quite a storyteller, too, and the tale
she passed down to her children and grandchildren was a whopper—whether or not
it was true.
Here’s the story as
Canby told it.
Sometime between May 23
and June 7, 1777, George Washington, Robert Morris, and Colonel George Ross
walked into Betsy Ross’s upholstery shop on Arch Street in Philadelphia.
Washington showed Betsy
a rough design for a new flag and asked if she could make it. She said she
could try, but the design needed work. One problem was the stars. The original
sketch called for six-pointed stars. Betsy suggested using five points instead.
The men objected, saying a five-pointed star was too difficult to make. Betsy grabbed a piece of paper, folded it, and made a single cut with her shears. When she opened the paper, there it was—a perfect five-pointed star. Washington revised the design, and Betsy went to work.
According to the family
story, the design was accepted, and Colonel Ross gave her one hundred pounds to
make more.
It’s a great story.
There’s just one problem. There’s no evidence it ever happened.
Congress officially
adopted a national flag on June 14, 1777, declaring that it should have
thirteen alternating red and white stripes and thirteen stars on a blue field,
representing “a new constellation.”
That’s it.
Congress didn’t name a
designer. There was no mention of Betsy Ross.
There is no surviving
record of the flag committee that supposedly visited her shop. No letter from
Washington. No congressional report. No receipt paying Betsy to make the first
flag. And no contemporary newspaper accounts celebrated her role.
Nothing.
To his credit, Canby
did his homework. His research placed Washington, Morris, and Colonel Ross in
Philadelphia at the time of the supposed meeting.
He also had an answer
for the missing committee records. Congress formed committees constantly, and
many went unrecorded. With a war raging, designing a flag may not have seemed
important enough to document.
Maybe.
But lacking
documentation, Canby turned to family memories. He submitted affidavits from
Betsy’s daughters, granddaughters, and nieces. They all remembered hearing the
story when they were young.
Canby could prove one
thing with reasonable certainty. Betsy Ross told the story. Whether it actually
happened is another matter.
Betsy Ross showing George Washington the new flag
The strange thing is, Betsy didn’t need the flag legend to have an interesting life.
Born Elizabeth Griscom
on January 1, 1752, she trained as an upholsterer and fell in love with fellow
apprentice John Ross. The two eloped in 1773. Three years later, John was dead after
a gunpowder explosion on the Philadelphia waterfront.
Betsy married again in
1777. Her second husband, Joseph Ashburn, was a sailor whose ship was captured
by the British. He died in a British prison in 1782.
A year later, Betsy
married John Claypoole, a fellow prisoner who had known Ashburn and brought
Betsy news of his death. That marriage lasted thirty-four years.
Betsy continued working
as an upholsterer and flag maker and lived until 1836. Somewhere along the way,
she told her family about the day George Washington walked into her shop and
asked her to make a flag.
The family never forgot
it. Neither did America. But the real question is, if Betsy Ross didn’t design
the flag, who did?
Her strongest rival was
Francis Hopkinson. Unlike Betsy Ross, Hopkinson left behind a paper trail.
He was a New Jersey
delegate to the Continental Congress and one of the fifty-six signers of the
Declaration of Independence. He was also an artist and designer who worked on
government seals, currency, and other official projects.
More importantly, in
1780 he asked Congress to pay him for his work. Among the items he claimed to
have designed was “the flag of the United States of America.”
Hopkinson wasn’t
repeating a family story nearly a century after the fact. He was making the
claim while the Revolution was still underway.
Congress didn’t pay
him. Not right away, anyway.
He originally asked for
a quarter cask of wine as compensation for his designs. The government demanded
a more formal accounting, and the matter dragged on. Treasury officials later
argued that he wasn’t the only person involved in the work and refused his
claim.
That doesn’t prove
Hopkinson designed the Stars and Stripes. But it gives him something Betsy Ross
never had—a contemporary document connecting him to the design of the American
flag.
So, who designed the
first American flag?
Betsy Ross? Francis
Hopkinson? Or a congressional committee whose records disappeared?
The truth is, nobody
knows for certain.
Betsy Ross gave America
a better story. Francis Hopkinson left behind better evidence.
And over two centuries later, we’re still arguing about it.
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