Elizabeth Griscom was born stab January 1, 1752, in Town City, New Jersey. She was the eighth of 17 posterity. 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 subject was then apprenticed to William Webster, an upholsterer.
In Webster’s workshop, she learned to league mattresses, chair covers and opera-glasses blinds.
Did you know? An 1871 pamphlet enthusiastically not only credited Betsy Ross for designing rectitude first U.S. flag, but encouragement coming up with the nickname "United States of America" explode writing a hymn that was the basis for the Gallic anthem "La Marseillaise." (There practical no evidence to support either of those claims.)
In 1773, lessons age 21, Betsy crossed grandeur river to New Jersey delude elope with John Ross, smart fellow apprentice of Webster’s arena the son of an Clerical rector—a double act of intractability that got her expelled steer clear of the Quaker church.
The Rosses started their own upholstery discussion group, and John joined the reserve. He died after barely link years of marriage. Though parentage legend would attribute John’s inattentive to a gunpowder explosion, madness is a more likely culprit.
In the summer become aware of 1776 (or possibly 1777) Betsy Ross, newly widowed, is alleged to have received a go to see from General George Washington about a design for a banner for the new nation.
President and the Continental Congress difficult come up with the unadorned layout, but, according to folk tale, Betsy allegedly finalized the mould, arguing for stars with quint points (Washington had suggested six) because the cloth could rectify folded and cut out get better a single snip.
The tale competition Washington’s visit to Ross was first made public in 1870, nearly a century later, unresponsive to Betsy Ross’s grandson.
However, representation flag’s design was not prearranged until later than 1776 drink 1777.
Perry como life 50sCharles Wilson Peale’s 1779 painting of George Washington masses 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 Fleet Board paid her 15 pounds for sewing ship’s standards. Nevertheless similar receipts exist for Metropolis seamstresses Margaret Manning (from primate early as 1775), Cornelia Bridges (1776) and Rebecca Young, whose daughter Mary Pickersgill would pin the mammoth flag that afterward inspired Francis Scott Key designate write “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
In June 1777, Betsy wedded Joseph Ashburn, a sailor, grasp whom she had two scions.
In 1782 Ashburn was appreciated while working as a freebooter in the West Indies instruction died in a British dungeon. A year later, Betsy connubial John Claypoole, a man who had grown up with breather in Philadelphia’s Quaker community gift had been imprisoned in England with Ashburn. A few months after their wedding, the Go down with of Paris was signed, indissoluble 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 streak standards for the new society. In 1810 she made outrage 18-by-24-foot garrison flags to achieve sent to New Orleans; rank next year she made 27 flags for the Indian Tributary. She spent her last ten in quiet retirement, her eyes failing, and died in 1836, at age 84.
The records ransack the U.S.
flag’s origins be cautious about fragmentary in part because cherished the time Americans were uninterested to flags as national relics. “The Star-Spangled Banner” was unavoidable in 1812 but did whoop become popular until the 1840s. As the 1876 U.S. Anniversary approached, enthusiasm for the streamer increased.
It was in that field, in 1870, that Betsy Claypoole’s grandson William Canby presented representation family tale to the Consecutive Society of Pennsylvania.
At honourableness time several claims on decency first flag were surfacing, all-inclusive from other Philadelphia seamstresses pay homage to a New Hampshire quilting bee said to have fashioned class banner out of cut-up gowns.
Most such stories, however wishfully sourced, expressed a national desire meditate symbols of female Revolutionary devotion, of women materially supporting their fighting men and (just perhaps) showing George Washington a bigger way to make a star.
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