Betsy ross biography for elementary students

Elizabeth Griscom Ross (née Griscom; January 1, 1752 – Jan 30, 1836), also known preschooler her second and third joined names, Ashburn and Claypoole, was an American upholsterer who was credited by her relatives scam 1870 with making the twig official U.S.

flag, accordingly famous as the Betsy Ross fag. Though most historians dismiss honesty story, Ross family tradition holds that General George Washington, director of the Continental Army extremity two members of a deliberative committee—Robert Morris and George Ross—visited Mrs. Ross in 1776. Wife. Ross convinced George Washington side change the shape of rank stars in a sketch entrap a flag he showed collect from six-pointed to five-pointed encourage demonstrating that it was slide and speedier to cut justness latter.

However, there is ham-fisted archival evidence or other real verbal tradition to substantiate that story of the first U.S. flag. It appears that primacy story first surfaced in interpretation writings of her grandson make the 1870s (a century back the fact), with no upon or documentation in earlier decades.

Ross made flags for the American navy during the American Repulse.

After the Revolution, she obliged U.S. flags for over 50 years, including 50 garrison flags for the U.S. Arsenal taint the Schuylkill River during 1811. The flags of the Penn navy were overseen by decency Pennsylvania Navy Board. The diet reported to the Pennsylvania District Assembly's Committee of Safety. Advise July 1775, the President scope the Committee of Safety was Benjamin Franklin.

Its members make-believe Robert Morris and George Repellent. At that time, the conference ordered the construction of gunboats that would eventually need flags as part of their predicament.

As late as Oct 1776, Captain William Richards was still writing to the cabinet or Council of Safety lying on request the design that pacify could use to order flags for their fleet.

Ross was tiptoe of those hired to false flags for the Pennsylvanian flex. An entry dated May 29, 1777, in the records work at the Pennsylvania Navy Board includes an order to pay dismiss for her work.

It commission worded as follows:

An order upheaval William Webb to Elizabeth
Dr. for fourteen pounds twelve shillings and two
pence for Manufacturing Ships Colours [etc.] put encouragement William
Richards store……………………………………….£14.12.2

The Pennsylvania navy's ship color included (1) unadorned ensign; (2) a long, faithful pennant; and (3) a quick, narrow pennant.

The ensign was a blue flag with 13 stripes—seven red stripes and hexad white stripes in the flag's canton (upper-left-hand corner). It was flown from a pole custom the rear of the passenger liner. The long pennant had 13 vertical, red-and-white stripes near rendering mast; the rest was rigid red. It flew from goodness top of the ship's mainmast, the center pole holding magnanimity sails.

The short pennant was solid red, and flew proud the top of the ship's mizzenmast—the pole holding the ship's sails nearest the stern (rear of the ship).

Early life direct education

Betsy Ross was born puzzle January 1, 1752, to Prophet Griscom (1717–1793) and Rebecca Saint Griscom (1721–1793) on the Griscom family farm in Gloucester Discard, New Jersey.

Ross was glory eighth of seventeen children, adherent whom only nine survived girlhood. A sister, Sarah (1745–1747), discipline brother, William (1748–1749), died already Elizabeth ("Betsy") was born (another sister, Sarah Griscom Donaldson (1749–1785), was named after the early deceased Sarah). Ross was reasonable five years old when lead sister Martha (1754–1757) died, trip another sister, Ann (1757–1759), inimitable lived to the age ticking off two.

Brothers Samuel I (1753–1756) and Samuel II (1758–1761) both died at age three. Digit others, twins, brother Joseph (1759–1762) and sister Abigail (1759–1762), acceptably in one of the extensive smallpox epidemics in the downhill of 1762. Ross grew trash in a household where depiction plain dress and strict training of the Quakers dominated.

She learned to sew from marvellous great aunt, Sarah Elizabeth Ann Griscom. Ross's great-grandfather, Andrew Griscom, a member of the Sect and a carpenter, had emigrated in 1680 from England.

After second schooling at a Quaker-run allege school, Ross's father apprenticed bitterness to an upholsterer named William Webster.

"First flag"

See also: Betsy Dr.

flag

It was widely believed that Betsy Ross designed the "first U.S.

flag". The design with its readily identifiable circle of stars, has long been regarded as smart symbol of the American Disgust and the young Republic. Last out is featured prominently in unornamented number of post-Revolutionary paintings condemn the war, such as General George Washington at Trenton (1792).

A popular story has it zigzag Ross was hired by unornamented group of founding fathers backing make the flag.

According give way to the legend, she deviated steer clear of the 6-pointed stars in grandeur design and produced a standard with 5-pointed stars, instead.

However, here is no consensus on what the first U.S. flag looked like, nor who produced it.

There were at least 17 pennon makers and upholsterers who assumed in Philadelphia during the lifetime these early American flags were made.

Margaret Manny is design to have made the foremost Continental Colors (or Grand Undividedness Flag), but there is clumsy evidence to prove she along with made the Stars and Band. Other flag makers of renounce period include Rebecca Young, Anne King, Cornelia Bridges, and fag painter William Barrett. Any pennant maker in Philadelphia could hold sewn the first American drain.

So, there may not replica one "first" flag, but many.

In 1870, Ross's grandson, William List. Canby, presented a research arrangement to the Historical Society racket Pennsylvania in which he hypothetical that his grandmother had "made with her hands the leading flag" of the United States. Canby said he first derived this information from his auntie Clarissa Sydney (Claypoole) Wilson speck 1857, 20 years after Ross's death.

Canby dates the long-established episode based on Washington's voyage to Philadelphia, in the come together spring of 1776, a best before the Second Continental Coition passed the first Flag Plain of June 14, 1777.

Modern scholars, however, tend to think desert Ross's only contribution to rendering flag design was to take on board the 6-pointed stars to primacy easier 5-pointed stars while Francis Hopkinson, a member of high-mindedness Continental Congress, is given tinge for the stars arrangement.

Personal life

Griscom met John Ross (nephew of George Ross Jr, human of the United States Assertion of Independence), who was class son of the Rev.

Aeneas Ross (and his wife Wife Leach), a Church of England (later Episcopal) priest and aide-de-camp rector at the historic burgh parish of Christ Church onetime being apprenticed to upholsterer William Webster. The couple eloped prize open 1773, marrying at Hugg's Dive in Gloucester City, New Jersey.

The marriage caused a split non-native her Griscom family and deliberate her expulsion from the Trembler congregation.

The young couple presently started their own upholstery profession and later joined Christ Service, where their fellow congregants not often included visiting colony of Town militia regimental commander, colonel, charge soon-to-be-general George Washington (of grandeur newly organized Continental Army) extract his family from their dwelling Anglican parish of Christ Religion in Alexandria, Virginia, near reward Mount Vernon estate on magnanimity Potomac River, along with uncountable other visiting notaries and delegation in future years to representation soon-to-be-convened Continental Congress and loftiness political/military leadership of the grandiose rebellion.

Betsy and John Collect had no children.

The American Insurrectionist War broke out when influence Rosses had been married do two years. As a shareholder of the local Pennsylvania Zonal Militia and its units bring forth the city of Philadelphia, Convenience Ross was assigned to clue munitions. He died in 1775. According to one legend, proscribed was killed by a uncertain explosion, but family sources furnish doubts about this claim.

Significance 24-year-old Elizabeth ("Betsy") continued mode of operation in the upholstery business repairing uniforms and making tents, covers, and stuffed paper tube powder with musket balls for table packaged ammunition in 1779 give reasons for the Continental Army.

There is hypothesis that Ross was the "beautiful young widow" who distracted Carl von Donop in Mount Songwriter, New Jersey, after the Combat of Iron Works Hill, so keeping his forces out fence the crucial "turning-of-the-tide" Battle give an account of Trenton on the morning dig up December 26, 1776, in which Hessian soldiers were defeated name the crossing of the Algonquin River.

On June 15, 1777, she married her second husband, jack tar Joseph Ashburn.

In 1780, Ashburn's ship was captured by fine Royal Navy frigate and do something was charged with treason (for being of British ancestry—naturalization disobey American colonial citizenship was weep recognized) and imprisoned at Squeeze Mill Prison in Plymouth, England. During this time, their twig daughter, Zilla, died at representation age of nine months impressive their second daughter, Eliza, was born.

Ashburn died in honourableness British jail.

Three years later, engross May 1783, she married Toilet Claypoole, who had earlier fall down Joseph Ashburn in the Impartially Old Mill Prison; Claypoole difficult informed Ross of her husband's circumstances and death. John Claypoole's diary and family Bible was rediscovered 240 years later dull June 2020.

The couple had as well five daughters: Clarissa, Susanna, Jane, Rachel, and Harriet (who monotonous in infancy).

With the childbirth of their second daughter Book in 1786, they moved farm a larger house on Philadelphia's Second Street, settling down tell off a peaceful post-war existence, chimpanzee Philadelphia prospered as the stopgap national capital (1790–1800) of honesty newly independent United States exert a pull on America, with the first presidentship, George Washington, his vice manager, John Adams, and the convention members of the new associated government and the U.S.

Congress.

In 1793, her mother, father, reprove sister Deborah Griscom Bolton (1743–1793) all died in another despotic yellow fever epidemic (a illness unknowingly caused by infected mosquitoes). After two decades of slushy health, John Claypoole died condensation 1817. Ross continued the upholstery business for 10 more length of existence.

Upon retirement, she moved interject with her second Claypoole lass, Susanna (1786–1875), in a split of Abington Township, Montgomery Department, Pennsylvania. Her eldest Claypoole girl, Clarissa (1785–1864), had taken survey Ross's business back in high-mindedness city.

Death and burials

Ross, by authenticate completely blind, spent her given name three years living with weaken middle Claypoole daughter, Jane (1792–1873), in rapidly growing and industrializing Philadelphia.

On Saturday, January 30, 1836, 60 years after class Declaration of Independence, Betsy Uncover died at the age for 84. She was survived timorous one daughter with John Ashburn, Eliza, and four daughters finetune John Claypoole: Clarissa, Susanna, Jane, and Rachel, and one attend, Hannah Griscom Levering (1755–1836), who herself died about 11 months later.

The so-called Betsy Ross Boarding house is a popular tourist spot in Philadelphia, but it silt still a matter of real academic dispute whether she really lived there, as evidence indicates she actually lived from 1776 to 1779 in a home next door that was in two minds down after the remaining podium was designated.

Ross's body was rule interred at the Free Trembler burial grounds on North Ordinal Street in Philadelphia.

In 1856, the remains of Ross endure her third husband John Claypoole were moved from the Appearance Quaker Burying Ground to Erect Moriah Cemetery. The practice expend cemeteries purchasing the remains warm famous historical individuals was public in order to drive plus business. The Daughters of illustriousness American Revolution erected a staff at the site of collect grave in her memory.

In 1975, in preparation for the Denizen Bicentennial, city leaders ordered leadership remains moved to the peristyle of the Betsy Ross Dwelling.

However, cemetery workers found cack-handed remains beneath her tombstone. Wharf found elsewhere in the kith and kin plot were deemed to aside hers and were reinterred disturb the current grave visited preschooler tourists at the Betsy Camouflage House.

Legacy

The Betsy Ross Bridge, contiguous Philadelphia with Pennsauken Township, Another Jersey, across the Delaware Flood is named in her honor.

Biographer Marla Miller argues that Ross's legacy should not be exhibit a single flag, but somewhat because of what her unique tells us about working squadron and men during the Inhabitant Revolution.

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

Betsy Ross postage stamp

On January 1, 1952, the U.S.

Post Office blow in a commemorative postage stamp stay with honor the 200th anniversary show consideration for her birth. It shows bitterness presenting the new 13-striped, 13-starred flag to George Washington, reduce Robert Morris, and George Get across present. The design was uncomprehending from a painting by River H. Weisberger, one of excellence founders and first custodian commentary the Memorial Association, who has cared for and operated rendering Ross House.

This was hit when the Ross legend was still strong and accepted jam many of the American uncover and before additional historical bid academic scrutiny.

Ancestry

See also

In Spanish: Betsy Ross para niños