What Betsy Ross’ real story tells us about women’s work in the Revolution − and why it still matters 250 years later

According to the legend, Betsy Ross showed George Washington how a five-pointed star instead of a six-pointed star would speed up production. GraphicaArtis/Archive Photos Collection via Getty Images For generations, most Americans knew – and maybe believed – a story about upholstery seamstress Betsy Ross and the making of the nation’s first flag. In the account passed down through her family, Ross was a young Philadelphia widow when George Washington and a congressional committee asked her to make a flag for the Colonies uniting in rebellion against England. A sketch showed what they envisioned: red and white stripes and a constellation of six-pointed stars across a blue field. But, the story continues, Ross folded a piece of paper “just so,” made a single cut, and voila! She produced a perfect five-pointed star. The men approved, she stitched a flag, Congress cheered and history was made. As a historian of early American craftswomen, including Ross, I have often seen how mythologies – history’s sound bites – can bury richer and deeper understandings of the past. That’s the case with Betsy Ross, whose story was never about designing one flag but about producing many – and being one of thousands of women whose labor was essential to the nation’s origins. Making of a legend In 1870, Ross’ grandson William J. Canby recounted the family’s story about Betsy Ross and the making of the first flag in a speech to the Pennsylvania Historical Society. Historians and members of the public greeted the tale with skepticism. Canby’s best efforts notwithstanding, no archival evidence then – or since – has confirmed that Ross fabricated the first U.S. flag. Still, the story gained traction. For a long while, Ross was a popular historical figure in U.S. culture, up there with the likes of Martha Washington and Abigail Adams. One of the earliest biopics imagined her life story, and her name graced everything from dolls to decanters. Over time, thousands of people began visiting her supposed home at 239 Arch St. in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia. The landmark is preserved as a house museum. As late as the 1980s, history professor Michael Frisch reported that “college students asked to name any person from pre–Civil War America who is not a politician or military figure” included Ross “year after year.” But in the years following the 1976 U.S. bicentennial, Ross’ fame was already cresting. Today many Americans aren’t entirely sure whether she was real or fictional. The Betsy Ross House museum in Philadelphia. Gilbert Carrasquillo via Getty Images

Widow turned aspiring government contractor Elizabeth Griscom Ross was indeed real. She was an upholstery worker who lived in Philadelphia from the 1750s to the 1830s. While no written record confirms the flag story, ample evidence survives to document the successful multigenerational flagmaking enterprise that she launched and then sustained with her daughter and granddaughters. According to an oral history recorded with Ross’ youngest daughter, sometime in the 1760s a young Elizabeth Griscom, who was born in 1752, joined a sister employed by Philadelphia upholsterer John Webster. Ross learned the craft of upholstery as well as the making of tassels and fringe from Ann King, who oversaw women’s work there. Ross married upholstery apprentice John Ross in 1773, and the pair launched a small shop. John died in January 1776. Ross’ second husband, mariner Joseph Ashburn, served the Revolution as a privateer and died in an English prison. In 1783, another privateer, John Claypoole, became Ross’ third husband, and the couple raised a large family and lived full lives in the city. My take on the legend’s veracity is that it is partly accurate, partly not, and there isn’t really any “first” flag. What is certainly true is this: Ross found herself widowed in 1776 just as Philadelphia braced for British forces, an effort that required the building of a navy and new flags representing the Americans. Women all around the seaport were getting contracts to stitch flags, and Ross surely wanted in. The “Did she or didn’t she sew the ‘first flag’?” question is usually framed as a story of design, but it’s not: It’s a story of production. Ross, drawing on years of experience, was saying to these potential clients, “If you want a lot of these flags, and fast, five-pointed stars work better.”
Women’s massive wartime effort When Betsy Ross told this story later to her children and grandchildren, at the heart of the story is a young craftswoman who met the “Father of Our Country” – and believed she taught him something. Understanding Ross’ real life is important because her story offers a view of women’s massive wartime production of flags, uniforms, tents, knapsacks and more – and because of the deep pride she and women like her felt in their contributions to the independence movement. Hundreds of Philadelphia women – including, briefly, Ross – manufactured ordnance for the Schuylkill arsenal. White, Black, Indigenous, enslaved and free women provided labor in the form of nursing, cooking, and making and maintaining clothes that was essential to military encampments. Women shaped diplomacy directly, especially among Indigenous peoples, and indirectly as they shared their perspectives with husbands, fathers and sons. They also managed affairs for absent family and stretched scarce resources to sustain wartime households. Whatever she did or did not offer to the making of the first U.S. flag, Elizabeth Griscom Ross Ashburn Claypoole certainly enjoyed a long career in flagmaking. The best documentation for this came just before the War of 1812. When Purveyor of public supplies Tench Coxe needed flags, he steered contracts to the onetime Elizabeth Ross, now known as Elizabeth Claypoole. In 1808, for instance, Coxe recorded that yards of blue fabric were en route to her; weeks later, the craftswoman submitted a bill for two garrison flags, two silk flags and seven regimental colors. In 1810, she was contracted for six 18-by-24-foot garrison flags for a military installation at New Orleans. These flags unfolded to 432 square feet and required more than 100,000 stitches. They must have been well received because another order followed, for 46 garrison flags, which she was to deliver “with all dispatch” to the arsenal. Orders also came in from the Indian Department to produce dozens of flags used in diplomatic exchanges with Native nations. By the time the U.S. went to war with England a second time in 1812, flags by Elizabeth Claypoole, aka “Betsy Ross,” flew all around the United States. Over her long career, Betsy Ross produced an unknown number of flags – the hundred or so recorded in archival sources represent a fraction of her total output. As the U.S. observes the 250th anniversary of its independence, Ross’ real life – today fully interpreted by the dedicated staff of the Betsy Ross House – offers a view into the lives of working women across America whose wartime labor helped build a nation. Read more of our stories about Philadelphia, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Marla Miller receives funding from the National Park Service as a consultant providing expertise on women and the the American Revolution.