Portal:Textile Arts/Selected biography/8
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Betsy Ross (January 1, 1752 – January 30, 1836) was an American woman said to have sewn the first American flag which incorporated stars representing the first thirteen colonies. She has attained legendary status in American culture although even in the most recent scholarship "many details [about her life] are conjecture based on research." A Pennsylvania native born to a Quaker family, she was a middle child from a large family who was apprenticed to an upholsterer after basic formal schooling. During her apprenticeship she met and married another apprentice named John Ross, eloping with him when she was 21 to avoid objections over the difference in their religious backgrounds. They married in New Jersey and opened an upholstery business together. The business suffered with the outbreak of war and her husband joined a militia, soon becoming one of the early casualties. Her meeting with George Washington is not well documented. Oral tradition maintains that she was responsible for at least one key design decision of the Americn flag by demonstrating that a five-pointed star was not too difficult to produce. She is known to have remarried a sea captain in 1777, to have had two daughters by her second husband, and to have lived to the age of 84. There is some dispute about whether the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia really was her actual residence, and in 1975 when she was to be reinterred no bones were found beneath her headstone.
