With the July 4th holiday just days away, this week I thought I would share a bit of patriotic lore with you in honor of country’s celebration of independence. In actuality, historians have contrary opinions as to whether Betsy Ross actually made the first flag of the United States. Regardless of it being fact or legend, Betsy Ross’s story has come to be one of our cherished portraits of a patriotic citizen ready to do her part for the country we all so dearly love and whose birthdate we celebrate on July 4th.
In 1752 the eighth child was born in the Quaker family of Griscom in Philadelphia, and she was named Elizabeth. Nine other siblings came after her, so with a total of sixteen brothers and sisters you may be sure that she never had much opportunity to be lonely. Perhaps the largeness of the family is a primary reason why, once she reached early adolescence, “Betsy” was apprenticed at Webster’s, which was at that time the leading upholstery establishment in Philadelphia. There she soon became acquainted with John Ross, one of her fellow apprentices. Their friendship grew to love, and when she turned twenty-one they were married.
Soon afterward John and Betsy left Webster’s and opened their own upholstery shop in a two story house on Arch Street–a quaint little house that was old then, for it was built of bricks that had come over to America as ballast in one of William Penn’s vessels. It had wide doors, big cupboards, narrow stairs and tiny windowpanes. The front room became the shop area where John and Betsy waited on customers. It was a time of great happiness for the couple as both their love and their business grew.
However, the happiness of the Ross family was not to last long. The spirit of liberty was awakening among the colonists and resistance to the ever increasing demands of the mother country, England, was growing. As did many other wives of those patriots who longed for independence, Betsy Ross eventually saw her husband march away from home to take up arms in rebellion. John, along with several other young men, was eventually assigned to guard gunpowder and other military stores at one of Philadelphia’s wharves located along the Delaware River. One evening an explosion occurred and John was seriously wounded. He died in January 1776, after a long, anguishing, and fruitless attempt by Betsy to nurse him back to health.
Betsy found herself a widow at twenty-four. Strong-willed, she was determined to support herself independently, if possible, and to continue to run the upholstery shop that she and John together had started. About five months after her husband’s death, as she was working in the shop, three gentlemen called upon her.
The first was George Washington. He was visiting Philadelphia for a few days to consult with the Continental Congress. This was not the first time Betsy Ross had encountered Washington, as he had visited her shop more than once, to have her embroider the ruffles for his shirts. Accompanying Washington on this visit was Robert Morris, who would go down in history as the treasurer and financier of the Revolution, and her late husband’s uncle, Colonel George Ross, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
These gentlemen had come to consult with Betsy. She had previously heard of how the various banners carried by troops from the different colonies, as well as by different regiments, had caused confusion in battle. It was time to replace the pine tree flag, the beaver flag, the rattlesnake flag, the hope flag, the silver crescent flag, the anchor flag, the liberty tree flag, and all of the rest of them, and have a single standard for the American army. Betsy has also heard of the Cambridge flag, often called the grand union flag, which Washington had raised the New Year’s day before, a flag half English, half American, with thirteen red and white stripes and the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew. But since the first of the year events had moved rapidly and the desire for separation from England had grown steadily stronger. A new flag was needed, to show the growing spirit of Americanism–which would soon crystalize on the Fourth of July.
All this Betsy knew, as any good patriot would. And she was not greatly surprised when General Washington said that they had come to consult with her about a new national flag.
“Can you make such a flag?” he asked.
Modestly and with some diffidence she replied, “I don’t know, sir, but I can try.”
Then in the little back parlor Washington showed her a rough sketch he had made–a square flag with thirteen stripes of red and white, and thirteen stars in the blue canton. He asked her opinion of the design. With unerring accuracy of eye she saw at once what was needed to make the flag more beautiful. She suggested that the proportions be changed, so that the length would be a third more than the width. She proposed that the thirteen stars be grouped to form some design, say a circle or a star, or placed in parallel rows. Lastly, she remarked that a five-pointed star was more symmetrical than one with six points.
“But,” asked Washington, “isn’t it more difficult to make?”
In answer practical Betsy took up a piece of paper, folded it over, and with one clip of her scissors cleverly made a perfect star with five even points.
That was sufficient, and the general drew up his chair to her table and made another pencil sketch, embodying her three suggestions. This second sketch was copied and colored by Philadelphia artist, William Barrett, a painter of some renown, who returned it to Mistress Ross. Meantime, not knowing just how to make a flag, for it must be sewed in a particular way, Betsy visited a shipping merchant, an old Scotchman who was a friend of Robert Morris, to borrow a ship’s flag to use as a guide.
And in this way Betsy Ross made the first Stars and Stripes. To test its effect, the story goes, the new banner was run up to the peak of a vessel in the Delaware River. Several months later the Continental Congress passed a resolution formally adopting the flag as our national standard.
This is the story Betsy told over and over again, to her daughters and grandchildren, and in later years they wrote the account down, just as they had heard it, and as you have read it here. It was George Washington, more than any other, who seems to have been most interested in the question of a national flag. But it was the skilled seamstress to whom he took his first, rough design, to have her opinion of its worth that would also give significant weight in what would become Old Glory. Much of our flag’s beauty is due to the keen eye, confident hand, and ready heart of patriot Elizabeth “Betsy” Ross. – Adapted from The Moral Compass by William J. Bennett
“This flag, which we honor and under which we serve, is the emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. It has no other character than that which we give it from generation to generation. The choices are ours. It floats in majestic silence above the hosts that execute those choices, whether in peace or in war. And yet, though silent, it speaks to us — speaks to us of the past, or the men and women who went before us, and of the records they wrote upon it.” – President Woodrow Wilson, 1917
Have an AWE-full weekend and July 4th holiday!
William J. “Bill” Bacque’