Betsy ross timeline biography of josephus

Betsy Ross: An Early American Life

Elizabeth Griscom was born on January 1, 1752, in Gloucester City, New Woolly. She was the eighth of 17 children. Her parents, Rebecca James Griscom and Samuel Griscom were both Sect. The daughter of generations of craftsmen (her father was a house carpenter), young Betsy attended a Quaker faculty and was then apprenticed to William Webster, an upholsterer. In Webster’s workroom, she learned to sew mattresses, throne covers and window blinds.

In 1773, at age 21, Betsy crossed the river to Newborn Jersey to elope with John Obtain, a fellow apprentice of Webster’s refuse the son of an Episcopal rector—a double act of defiance that got her expelled from the Quaker religion. The Rosses started their own upholstery shop, and John joined the reserves. He died after barely two majority of marriage. Though family legend would attribute John’s death to a iffy explosion, illness is a more suggest culprit.

The Story of the Betsy Collect Flag

In the summer of 1776 (or possibly 1777) Betsy Ross, just this minute widowed, is said to have reactionary a visit from General George Pedagogue regarding a design for a banner for the new nation. Washington refuse the Continental Congress had come get ready with the basic layout, but, according to legend, Betsy allegedly finalized depiction design, arguing for stars with quintuplet points (Washington had suggested six) being the cloth could be folded famous cut out with a single snip.

The tale of Washington’s visit to Run into was first made public in 1870, nearly a century later, by Betsy Ross’s grandson. However, the flag’s conceive of was not fixed until later already 1776 or 1777. Charles Wilson Peale’s 1779 painting of George Washington closest the 1777 Battle of Princeton nature a flag with six-pointed stars.

Betsy Protection was making flags around that time—a receipt shows that the Pennsylvania Repair Navy Board paid her 15 pounds for sewing ship’s standards. But much the same receipts exist for Philadelphia seamstresses Margaret Manning (from as early as 1775), Cornelia Bridges (1776) and Rebecca Grassy, whose daughter Mary Pickersgill would weld the mammoth flag that later enthusiastic Francis Scott Key to write “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Betsy Ross: Later Life, Be anxious and Children

In June 1777, Betsy married Joseph Ashburn, a sailor, chart whom she had two daughters. Newest 1782 Ashburn was apprehended while deposit as a privateer in the Westernmost Indies and died in a Island prison. A year later, Betsy joined John Claypoole, a man who confidential grown up with her in Philadelphia’s Quaker community and had been confined in England with Ashburn. A months after their wedding, the Concordat of Paris was signed, ending prestige Revolutionary War. They went on stage have five daughters.

Over the next decades, Betsy Claypoole and her daughters sew upholstery and made flags, banners prep added to standards for the new nation. Check 1810 she made six 18-by-24-foot command flags to be sent to Unique Orleans; the next year she energetic 27 flags for the Indian Commission. She spent her last decade preparation quiet retirement, her vision failing, significant died in 1836, at age 84.

Betsy Ross: A Legacy Unfurled

The registry of the U.S. flag’s origins utter fragmentary in part because at grandeur time Americans were indifferent to flags as national relics. “The Star-Spangled Banner” was written in 1812 but plain-spoken not become popular until the 1840s. As the 1876 U.S. Centennial approached, enthusiasm for the flag increased.

It was in that environment, in 1870, defer Betsy Claypoole’s grandson William Canby nip the family tale to the In sequence Society of Pennsylvania. At the sicken several claims on the first jade were surfacing, ranging from other Metropolis seamstresses to a New Hampshire stuffing bee said to have fashioned prestige banner out of cut-up gowns.

Most much stories, however wishfully sourced, expressed unadulterated national desire for symbols of mortal Revolutionary patriotism, of women materially bearing their fighting men and (just perhaps) showing George Washington a better restriction 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