Betsy Ross and the Making of America by Marla R. Miller

At that time, the committee ordered the construction of gunboats that would eventually need flags as part of their equipment. Its members included Robert Morris and George Ross. In July 1775, the President of the Committee of Safety was Benjamin Franklin. The board reported to the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly's Committee of Safety. The flags of the Pennsylvania navy were overseen by the Pennsylvania Navy Board. Arsenal on the Schuylkill River during 1811. flags for over 50 years, including 50 garrison flags for the U.S. Ross made flags for the Pennsylvanian navy during the American Revolution. It appears that the story first surfaced in the writings of her grandson in the 1870s (a century after the fact), with no mention or documentation in earlier decades. However, there is no archival evidence or other recorded verbal tradition to substantiate this story of the first U.S. Ross convinced George Washington to change the shape of the stars in a sketch of a flag he showed her from six-pointed to five-pointed by demonstrating that it was easier and speedier to cut the latter. Though most historians dismiss the story, Ross family tradition holds that General George Washington, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army and two members of a congressional committee- Robert Morris and George Ross-visited Mrs. flag, accordingly known as the Betsy Ross flag. Sarah Elizabeth Ann Griscom (great-aunt)Įlizabeth Griscom Ross (née Griscom January 1, 1752 – January 30, 1836), also known by her second and third married names, Ashburn and Claypoole, was an American upholsterer who was credited by her relatives in 1870 with making the first official U.S.This first-rate biography of Ross (1752 1836) is authoritative and engrossing and goes a long way toward recovering the history of early American women and work.

The lives of her family members were claimed by the yellow fever epidemic brought by refugees from revolutionary Haiti who flooded Philadelphia in 1793 her artisanal family's prosperity was sacrificed to war and political upheaval. Ross's uncles were deeply involved in the Stamp Act protests a Quaker who left her church to marry her first husband, herself a supporter of the colonies' rebellion, Ross was twice widowed by the Revolution and was married again to a war veteran. There is no doubt, Miller says, that the skilled needlewoman was one of Philadelphia's most important flag makers from the Revolution through the War of 1812, and that Ross is important because she offers a unique lens on Philadelphia in that era. But Miller, an associate professor of history at UMass-Amherst, says the story perpetuated by Ross's family is neither altogether right nor altogether wrong. Many modern historians believe the tale is apocryphal. Many Americans accept as true the story of Betsy Ross's role in creating the first American flag.

Betsy Ross and the Making of America by Marla R. Miller