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    PUBLICATIONS

    OF THE

    SCOTTSVILLE LITERARY SOCIETY,

    No. 7.

    DID BETSEY ROSS DESIGN

    THE FLAG OF THE

    UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?

    By Franklin Hanford.

    SCOTTSVILLE, N. Y.

    ISAAC VAN HOOSER. PRINTER.

    1917.




DID BETSY ROSS DESIGN THE FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?

By Franklin Hanford.

[Illustration]

A paper read before the Scottsville Literary Society, January 22, 1917.

[Illustration]


On Saturday, the fourteenth of June, 1777, the Continental Congress,
then in session in Philadelphia, adopted a resolution which reads as
follows: “Resolved, that the flag of the thirteen United States be
thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be thirteen
stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”

“The Journal of Congress is silent as to the name of the member or
committee that introduced this resolution and neither is there any
record of the discussions that may have preceded the adoption of our
national emblem.” “It is a matter of great regret that no record of
the circumstances attending the birth of the Stars and Stripes has
ever been found,” for we should like to know who designed our present
flag, and also, though a matter of less interest, who made, that is
manufactured, the first one.

Some years ago I happened to see upon the wall at Mrs. Emma H. Miller’s
house in Scottsville, a very attractive picture in colors. This picture
represented General Washington seated on the left and Robert Morris and
the Hon. George Ross standing near him, while, seated on the right, was
Betsey Ross with a =completed= flag of thirteen stripes, and thirteen
stars in a blue field, in her lap. “C. H. Weisberger, Copyright 1903,”
was inscribed near the bottom of the picture. Underneath it was this
legend; “Birth of our nation’s flag. The first American flag accepted
by Congress and adopted by resolution of Congress June 14, 1777, as the
national standard, was made by Betsey Ross, in 1776 at 239 Arch Street,
Philadelphia, in the room represented in this picture. The Committee,
Robert Morris and Hon. George Ross, accompanied by General George
Washington, called upon this celebrated woman and together with her
suggestions, produced our beautiful emblem of liberty.”

The legend under this picture led me to make some inquiries as to
Betsey Ross. Who was she? And did she assist in designing and did she
make the first flag or ensign of the United States of America? If not
Betsey Ross, who did design and make it? Endeavoring to answer these
questions, I have consulted some thirteen works relating wholly or in
part to the flag of the United States. A list of them is appended to
this paper.

Betsey or Elizabeth Griscom was the fifth daughter of Samuel and
Rebecca (James) Griscom and was born January 1, 1752. She was
married when quite young to John Ross, son of the Reverend Aeneas
Ross, an Episcopal clergyman of Newcastle, Delaware, whose brother,
the Hon. George Ross, became one of the signers of the Declaration
of Independence. George Ross was interested in the furnishing of
cannon-balls, with perhaps other military stores for the Colonial
defence, and it was while on guard at night over these, with other
young men, that the nephew, John Ross, Betsey’s first husband, received
an injury from the effects of which he died in January, 1776.

It was during her widowhood that Betsey Ross is said to have made
the first Stars and Stripes. For a second husband she married a
sea-captain, John or Joseph Ashburne, who died in Mill Prison, England,
in 1782. The following year, she married Ashburne’s prison-mate, John
Claypoole, who died in 1817.

Betsey Ross died in her daughter’s home in Philadelphia January
30, 1836, aged eighty-four. She was buried in the Cemetery of the
Society of Free Quakers on South Fifth Street, from which place her
remains were transferred in 1857 to Mount Moriah Cemetery. Four of
her daughters grew up and married. Betsey Ross’ first husband was
an upholsterer. She continued his business and for fifty years was
an expert needlewoman, lace-maker and flag-maker. After her death,
Mrs. Clarissa Wilson, one of her daughters, succeeded to the business
and continued to make flags for the arsenals and navy-yards and for
the mercantile marine for many years. But being conscientious on
the subject of war, Mrs. Wilson gave up the Government business but
continued to make flags for the merchant marine until 1857.

The earliest “History of the National Flag,” of which I have knowledge,
was written by Captain Schuyler Hamilton, U. S. Army, and published at
Philadelphia in 1853, sixty-four years ago. Captain Hamilton makes no
mention of Betsey Ross, and does not give to any one person or group of
persons the honor of designing our flag.

The next “History of Our Flag” was written by Ferdinand L. Sarmiento
and published in 1864, during the Civil War, at Philadelphia.
Sarmiento, like Captain Hamilton, does not mention Betsey Ross and
does not credit the origin of our flag to any one person or to any
committee, or group of persons, but considers honor due to many
individuals who assisted, more or less, in the =development= of our
flag.

So far as I can learn, no mention of Mrs. Ross occurs in any history
of our country or in any of the many biographies of Washington, prior
to 1870, ninety-three years after the flag was adopted. In that year,
however, “Mr. Wm. J. Canby of Philadelphia, read before the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania, a paper on the history of the American flag,
in which he stated that his maternal grandmother, Mrs. John Ross,
was the first maker and partial designer of the Stars and Stripes.”
Mr. Canby said that Mrs. Ross received a call in June, 1776, from
General Washington, Col. George Ross, and Robert Morris, who told her
they were a Committee of Congress and wanted her to make a flag from
a rough drawing they had, which drawing, upon her suggestion, was
redrawn by Washington in pencil. This was prior to the Declaration of
Independence. Mr. Canby claimed that he had heard his grandmother tell
the story when he was a boy eleven years old, and that three of Mrs.
Ross’ daughters then living in 1870 and a niece, aged ninety-five,
confirmed his statements.

In the picture I have referred to, Mrs. Ross is represented as having a
=completed= Stars and Stripes in her lap, although, at the time of the
visit of the Committee to her, according to Mr. Canby’s statement, the
flag had not even been designed or manufactured.

The best and most complete “History of the Flag of the U. S. of
America” was written by Rear Admiral George H. Preble, U. S. Navy. The
first edition was published in 1872 and the second, revised, edition,
in 1880. Rear-Admiral Preble gives Mr. Canby’s story about Mrs. Ross
in full, and he considers it probable that Mrs. Ross did manufacture
or have manufactured at different times flags of the United States of
various designs. His conclusion, however, is that “it will probably
never be known who designed our union of stars, the records of Congress
being silent on the subject and there being no mention or suggestion
of it in any of the voluminous correspondence or diaries of the time,
public or private, which have ever been published.”

In 1878, a ridiculous pamphlet was published, entitled “The History of
the First United States Flag and the Patriotism of Betsey Ross, the
Immortal Heroine that Originated the First Flag of the Union. Dedicated
to the Ladies of the United States by Col. J. Franklin Reigart.” This
was published at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

In Reigart’s book, the claim is made that Mrs. Ross “=originated=”
our flag. Mr. Canby, Mrs. Ross’ grandson, had claimed only that she
=manufactured= it and that she suggested some changes in the sketch
shown her by the committee. In Reigart’s book there is a pretended
portrait of Betsey Ross making the first flag. This was really the
portrait of a Quaker lady of Lancaster and was taken from a photograph.
Mr. Canby repudiated Reigart’s book and said he did not correctly
present his grandmother or her claim.

In 1876 Mr. J. C. Julius Langbein wrote a small history of our flag and
he accepts Mr. Canby’s account of Mrs. Ross making the first flag and
suggesting some change in the original design.

Learning that a book entitled “Betsey Ross” had been published in
1901, I procured a copy thinking it biographical or historical but it
proved to be a romance, pure and simple, woven about Mrs. Ross who is
represented as the heroine of her day and the principal designer of the
flag.

Since 1891, several small works on the flag have been published,
written by members of the Daughters of the American Revolution and
dedicated to that organization. In those works great honor is given
Mrs. Ross, indeed, the members of the D. A. R. as a whole, seem to
have