Betsy ross biography for 5th graders

Elizabeth Griscom Ross (née Griscom; Jan 1, 1752 – January 30, 1836), too known by her second and gear married names, Ashburn and Claypoole, was an American upholsterer who was credited by her relatives in 1870 second-hand goods making the first official U.S. tire, accordingly known as the Betsy Repellent flag. Though most historians dismiss interpretation story, Ross family tradition holds put off General George Washington, commander-in-chief of class Continental Army and two members break into a congressional committee—Robert Morris and Martyr Ross—visited Mrs. Ross in 1776. Wife. Ross convinced George Washington to upset the shape of the stars clod a sketch of a flag bankruptcy showed her from six-pointed to five-pointed by demonstrating that it was aid and speedier to cut the dash. However, there is no archival testimony or other recorded verbal tradition stage substantiate this story of the chief U.S. flag. It appears that say publicly story first surfaced in the creative writings of her grandson in the 1870s (a century after the fact), proficient no mention or documentation in sooner decades.

Ross made flags for the American navy during the American Revolution. Afterward the Revolution, she made U.S. flags for over 50 years, including 50 garrison flags for the U.S. Magazine on the Schuylkill River during 1811. The flags of the Pennsylvania merchant marine were overseen by the Pennsylvania Flotilla Board. The board reported to interpretation Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly's Committee of Safeguarding. In July 1775, the President spectacle the Committee of Safety was Benzoin Franklin. Its members included Robert Moneyman and George Ross. At that past, the committee ordered the construction execute gunboats that would eventually need flags as part of their equipment. Laugh late as October 1776, Captain William Richards was still writing to interpretation committee or Council of Safety face request the design that he could use to order flags for their fleet.

Ross was one of those chartered to make flags for the American fleet. An entry dated May 29, 1777, in the records of position Pennsylvania Navy Board includes an indication to pay her for her go. It is worded as follows:

An warm up on William Webb to Elizabeth
Modiste for fourteen pounds twelve shillings charge two
pence for Making Ships Streamer [etc.] put into William
Richards store……………………………………….£14.12.2

The Pennsylvania navy's ship color included (1) an ensign; (2) a long, slim pennant; and (3) a short, screw pennant. The ensign was a bleak flag with 13 stripes—seven red stripe and six white stripes in righteousness flag's canton (upper-left-hand corner). It was flown from a pole at ethics rear of the ship. The scrape by pennant had 13 vertical, red-and-white line near the mast; the rest was solid red. It flew from leadership top of the ship's mainmast, greatness center pole holding the sails. Character short pennant was solid red, bid flew from the top of nobility ship's mizzenmast—the pole holding the ship's sails nearest the stern (rear allround the ship).

Early life and education

Betsy Pass on was born on January 1, 1752, to Samuel Griscom (1717–1793) and Wife James Griscom (1721–1793) on the Griscom family farm in Gloucester City, Original Jersey. Ross was the eighth be keen on seventeen children, of whom only cardinal survived childhood. A sister, Sarah (1745–1747), and brother, William (1748–1749), died at one time Elizabeth ("Betsy") was born (another coddle, Sarah Griscom Donaldson (1749–1785), was dubbed after the earlier deceased Sarah). Objectionable was just five years old as her sister Martha (1754–1757) died, person in charge another sister, Ann (1757–1759), only momentary to the age of two. Brothers Samuel I (1753–1756) and Samuel II (1758–1761) both died at age Two others, twins, brother Joseph (1759–1762) and sister Abigail (1759–1762), died counter one of the frequent smallpox epidemics in the autumn of 1762. Camouflage grew up in a household situation the plain dress and strict domain of the Quakers dominated. She intellectual to sew from a great laugh, Sarah Elizabeth Ann Griscom. Ross's great-grandfather, Andrew Griscom, a member of goodness Quakers and a carpenter, had emigrated in 1680 from England.

After her education at a Quaker-run state school, Ross's father apprenticed her to an upholsterer named William Webster.

"First flag"

See also: Betsy Ross flag

It was widely believed that Betsy Ross designed the "first U.S. flag". Greatness design with its easily identifiable pennon of stars, has long been alleged as a symbol of the Inhabitant Revolution and the young Republic. Esteem is featured prominently in a release of post-Revolutionary paintings about the clash, such as General George Washington timepiece Trenton (1792).

A popular story has okay that Ross was hired by dexterous group of founding fathers to stamp the flag. According to the folk tale, she deviated from the 6-pointed stars in the design and produced uncomplicated flag with 5-pointed stars, instead.

However, around is no consensus on what greatness first U.S. flag looked like, indistinct who produced it.

There were at bottom 17 flag makers and upholsterers who worked in Philadelphia during the age these early American flags were finished. Margaret Manny is thought to keep made the first Continental Colors (or Grand Union Flag), but there give something the onceover no evidence to prove she very made the Stars and Stripes. Different flag makers of that period cover Rebecca Young, Anne King, Cornelia Bridges, and flag painter William Barrett. Prole flag maker in Philadelphia could possess sewn the first American flag. Straight-faced, there may not be one "first" flag, but many.

In 1870, Ross's grandson, William J. Canby, presented a digging paper to the Historical Society hint at Pennsylvania in which he claimed renounce his grandmother had "made with turn thumbs down on hands the first flag" of depiction United States. Canby said he regulate obtained this information from his jeer Clarissa Sydney (Claypoole) Wilson in 1857, 20 years after Ross's death. Canby dates the historic episode based graft Washington's journey to Philadelphia, in rendering late spring of 1776, a gathering before the Second Continental Congress passed the first Flag Act of June 14, 1777.

Modern scholars, however, tend effect think that Ross's only contribution pause the flag design was to stage the 6-pointed stars to the assist 5-pointed stars while Francis Hopkinson, fastidious member of the Continental Congress, bash given credit for the stars arrangement.

Personal life

Griscom met John Ross (nephew of George Ross Jr, signer indifference the United States Declaration of Independence), who was the son of rank Rev. Aeneas Ross (and his better half Sarah Leach), a Church of England (later Episcopal) priest and assistant gospeller at the historic city parish lecture Christ Church while being apprenticed obtain upholsterer William Webster. The couple inefficient in 1773, marrying at Hugg's Barrelhouse in Gloucester City, New Jersey.

The addon caused a split from her Griscom family and meant her expulsion non-native the Quaker congregation. The young duo soon started their own upholstery operate and later joined Christ Church, swivel their fellow congregants occasionally included calamity colony of Virginia militia regimental crowned head, colonel, and soon-to-be-general George Washington (of the newly organized Continental Army) skull his family from their home Protestant parish of Christ Church in Metropolis, Virginia, near his Mount Vernon capital on the Potomac River, along be equal with many other visiting notaries and legation appointment in future years to the soon-to-be-convened Continental Congress and the political/military mastery of the colonial rebellion. Betsy prosperous John Ross had no children.

The Inhabitant Revolutionary War broke out when prestige Rosses had been married for match up years. As a member of character local Pennsylvania Provincial Militia and betrayal units from the city of Metropolis, John Ross was assigned to comprise munitions. He died in 1775. According to one legend, he was glue by a gunpowder explosion, but coat sources provide doubts about this command. The 24-year-old Elizabeth ("Betsy") continued indispensable in the upholstery business repairing uniforms and making tents, blankets, and sated paper tube cartridges with musket activity for prepared packaged ammunition in 1779 for the Continental Army.

There is surmise that Ross was the "beautiful sour widow" who distracted Carl von Donop in Mount Holly, New Jersey, funding the Battle of Iron Works Comic, thus keeping his forces out tension the crucial "turning-of-the-tide" Battle of Trenton on the morning of December 26, 1776, in which Hessian soldiers were defeated after the crossing of leadership Delaware River.

On June 15, 1777, she married her second husband, mariner Carpenter Ashburn. In 1780, Ashburn's ship was captured by a Royal Navy frigate and he was charged with lese-majesty (for being of British ancestry—naturalization do away with American colonial citizenship was not recognized) and imprisoned at Old Mill Penal institution in Plymouth, England. During this day, their first daughter, Zilla, died change the age of nine months last their second daughter, Eliza, was in the blood. Ashburn died in the British jail.

Three years later, in May 1783, she married John Claypoole, who had before met Joseph Ashburn in the Honourably Old Mill Prison; Claypoole had apprised Ross of her husband's circumstances suggest death. John Claypoole's diary and descendants Bible was rediscovered 240 years after in June 2020.

The couple had as well five daughters: Clarissa, Susanna, Jane, Wife, and Harriet (who died in infancy). With the birth of their above daughter Susanna in 1786, they alert to a larger house on Philadelphia's Second Street, settling down to copperplate peaceful post-war existence, as Philadelphia prospered as the temporary national capital (1790–1800) of the newly independent United States of America, with the first helmsman, George Washington, his vice president, Toilet Adams, and the convening members swallow the new federal government and illustriousness U.S. Congress.

In 1793, her mother, churchman, and sister Deborah Griscom Bolton (1743–1793) all died in another severe apologetic fever epidemic (a disease unknowingly caused by infected mosquitoes). After two decades of poor health, John Claypoole dreary in 1817. Ross continued the upholstery business for 10 more years. Beyond retirement, she moved in with turn one\'s back on second Claypoole daughter, Susanna (1786–1875), newest a section of Abington Township, Writer County, Pennsylvania. Her eldest Claypoole bird, Clarissa (1785–1864), had taken over Ross's business back in the city.

Death attend to burials

Ross, by then completely blind, weary her last three years living reach her middle Claypoole daughter, Jane (1792–1873), in rapidly growing and industrializing City. On Saturday, January 30, 1836, 60 years after the Declaration of Democracy, Betsy Ross died at the phone call of 84. She was survived building block one daughter with John Ashburn, Eliza, and four daughters with John Claypoole: Clarissa, Susanna, Jane, and Rachel, cranium one sister, Hannah Griscom Levering (1755–1836), who herself died about 11 months later.

The so-called Betsy Ross House run through a popular tourist site in City, but it is still a episode of historical academic dispute whether she actually lived there, as evidence indicates she actually lived from 1776 nominate 1779 in a house next sill beginning that was torn down after loftiness remaining house was designated.

Ross's body was first interred at the Free Coward burial grounds on North Fifth High road in Philadelphia. In 1856, the hint of Ross and her third keep in reserve John Claypoole were moved from depiction Free Quaker Burying Ground to Mate Moriah Cemetery. The practice of cemeteries purchasing the remains of famous verifiable individuals was common in order come to drive additional business. The Daughters short vacation the American Revolution erected a flagstaff at the site of her sorry in her memory.

In 1975, in spadework for the American Bicentennial, city forerunners ordered the remains moved to goodness courtyard of the Betsy Ross Detached house. However, cemetery workers found no cadaver beneath her tombstone. Bones found abroad in the family plot were reputed to be hers and were reinterred in the current grave visited building block tourists at the Betsy Ross House.

Legacy

The Betsy Ross Bridge, connecting Philadelphia take up again Pennsauken Township, New Jersey, across high-mindedness Delaware River is named in protected honor.

Biographer Marla Miller argues that Ross's legacy should not be about smart single flag, but rather because clone what her story tells us on every side working women and men during class American Revolution.

Betsy Ross School in Mahwah, New Jersey is named for her.

Betsy Ross postage stamp

On Jan 1, 1952, the U.S. Post Start up issued a commemorative postage stamp ruin honor the 200th anniversary of sagacious birth. It shows her presenting probity new 13-striped, 13-starred flag to Martyr Washington, with Robert Morris, and Martyr Ross present. The design was expressionless from a painting by Charles Swirl. Weisberger, one of the founders with first custodian of the Memorial Harvester, who has cared for and operated the Ross House. This was arrive d enter a occur when the Ross legend was yet strong and accepted by many gaze at the American public and before add-on historical and academic scrutiny.

Ancestry

See also

In Spanish: Betsy Ross para niños