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Betsy Ross, legend has it, sewed the first American flag, the symbol a scruffy, hastily established Continental Army rallied behind. The repercussions of the patriotism the American flag provoked are still felt today. Sadly, historians agree that Betsy Ross, though an exceptional woman of her time, is not really responsible for the creation of the first flag of the United States. Though her famous meeting with George Washington was chronicled by her grandchildren and based on the story she herself told, historians can find little evidence that Betsy Ross did indeed stitch the symbol that so many Americans hold dear.

Elizabeth Griscom was born on January 1, 1752 to Samuel, a carpenter, and Rebecca Griscom. Known as Betsy, she was the eighth of seventeen children born to the Quaker couple.

Betsy attended a school for Quaker children in her native Philadelphia. She was then apprenticed to John Webster, a local upholsterer. While she studied upholstering, a trade that required great skill with needle and thread, she fell in love with John Ross who was also apprenticed to Webster. The match was not met with approval by her parents. Ross’ father was a member of the Anglican clergy, and Betsy would be shunned from the Quaker faith for marrying a man of a different religion. Despite the dire consequences their marriage would produce, Betsy and Ross eloped to New Jersey in November 1773. In a romantic dash the couple crossed the Delaware River to Hugg’s Tavern in Gloucester and were married.

Betsy and Ross established their own upholstery business together in Philadelphia. At the outbreak of the American Revolution Ross joined the Pennsylvania militia. He was killed in January 1776 when the store of munitions he was guarding exploded.

Widowed after only two years of marriage and still in her early twenties, Betsy focused on her upholstery business and the war effort. Her business profited from the uniforms and tents required by the fledgling military.

It was in 1776, that the great legend Betsy Ross helped promulgate purportedly took place. According to her grandson William J. Canby, though he was, “but a little boy when I heard it,”:

“Colonel Ross with Robert Morris and General Washington, called on Mrs. Ross and told her they were a committee of Congress, and wanted her to make a flag from the drawing, a rough one, which, upon her suggestions, was redrawn by General Washington in pencil in her back parlor.

According to the legend the General Washington and his committee planned for the flag to be spotted with six-pointed stars. After Betsy adeptly demonstrated with paper and scissors how easily five-pointed stars could be executed, General Washington and his followers quickly adopted the latter. It is popularly thought that this was Betsy’s first attempt at flag making. Even if it was not Betsy Ross’ own handiwork that brought about the original American flag, her contribution to its propagation is set down in the minutes of the State Navy Board of Pennsylvania for May 29, 1777:

“An order on…Elizabeth Ross for fourteen pounds twelve shillings, and two pence, for making ship’s colours, &C, put into Richards store.” On June 15, 1777, Betsy married Joseph Ashburn, a mariner. The couple had two children, Zilla, who died while still a child and Elizabeth. In 1780, Ashburn was at sea on a mission to the West Indies to obtain supplies for the Continental Army when his ship was captured by a British frigate. Ashburn and his fellow crew members were declared traitors and transported to Old Mill Prison in Plymouth, England.

Betsy waited patiently for her husband, through the birth of one child and the death of another, alone while a young United States celebrated its victory over the British and the end of the revolution.

It was not until 1782 that she was visited by John Claypoole, a friend and fellow inmate of Ashburn’s in the Old Mill Prison. Claypoole’s visit was one of condolence; he brought Betsy news of her husband’s death. Ashburn died in the Old Mill Prison in March 1782, ironically months after peace was declared between the British and the new United States.

It was to Claypoole that Betsy turned, and a year later on May 8, 1783, she married him. She and Claypoole had five daughters, Clarissa Sidney, Susannah, Rachel, Jane, and Harriet, all of whom, with the exception of little Harriet, survived into adulthood. Betsy and Claypoole also joined the Society of Free Quakers. Though not quite the traditional pacifist Quaker sect, since the society supported the American Revolution, Betsy was accepted back into her faith.

In 1817, after years of infirmity and suffering due to injuries he sustained in the war, Claypoole died. Betsy maintained her upholstery business until 1827, when she retired to the country and her daughter Susannah’s farm in the suburb of Abington.

On January 30, 1836 Betsy Ross died at age 84.

When President Woodrow Wilson was asked his views on the legend of Betsy Ross, he exclaimed, “Would that it were true!” A legend like Betsy Ross’ incorporates so many characteristic of the common man and common patriotism that one wishes it was true. That is the reason her legend persists.

Legends are the stuff of which heroes are made and heroes make legends. Betsy Ross and the first flag of the United States is a beautiful legend. A young widow trying to earn a living in a traumatic time of war and great upheaval, called on by one of the greatest figures in the history of the United States to create the celebrated symbol of her country is a stirring thought. In many ways Betsy Ross was just another woman, just another American. If this woman of history could quietly craft such a momentous patriotic symbol embodying such a great ideal, then other Americans like her, struggling through their often tumultuous existence, were capable of that great feat too. Even if Betsy Ross didn’t sew the first flag of the United States she was capable of it. Like the people the American flag Betsy Ross didn’t stitch represents, Betsy Ross was a quiet hero.

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