page_title: Betsy Ross
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Betsy Ross / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: Certificate of the American Flag House and Betsy Ross Memorial Association, issued 1912; at left and right vignettes with the house in which the flag was produced and with the gravesite of Betsy Ross. Deutsch: Zertifikat der American Flag House and Betsy Ross Memorial Association von 1912; rechts und links Vignetten mit dem Haus, in dem die Flagge hergestellt wurde, sowie mit dem Grab von Betsy Ross
context_page_description: Elizabeth Griscom Ross, née Griscom, also known by her second and third married names, Ashburn and Claypoole, was an American upholsterer who was credited by her relatives in 1870 with making the first American flag, accordingly known as the Betsy Ross flag. Though most historians dismiss the story, Ross family tradition holds that General George Washington, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army and two members of a congressional committee—Robert Morris and George Ross—visited Mrs. Ross in 1776. Mrs. Ross convinced George Washington to change the shape of the stars in a sketch of a flag he showed her from six-pointed to five-pointed by demonstrating that it was easier and speedier to cut the latter. However, there is no archival evidence or other recorded verbal tradition to substantiate this story of the first American flag. It appears that the story first surfaced in the writings of her grandson in the 1870s, with no mention or documentation in earlier decades.
  Ross made flags for the Pennsylvania navy during the American Revolution. After the Revolution, she made U.S. flags for over 50 years, including 50 garrison flags for the U.S.
context_section_description: Griscom met John Ross (nephew of George Ross Jr, signer of the United States Declaration of Independence), who was the son of the Rev. Aeneas Ross (and his wife Sarah Leach), a Church of England (later Episcopal) priest and assistant rector at the historic city parish of Christ Church while being apprenticed to upholsterer William Webster. The couple eloped in 1773, marrying at Hugg's Tavern in Gloucester City, New Jersey.
  The marriage caused a split from her Griscom family and meant her expulsion from the Quaker congregation. The young couple soon started their own upholstery business and later joined Christ Church, where their fellow congregants occasionally included visiting colony of Virginia militia regimental commander, colonel, and soon-to-be-general George Washington (of the newly-organized Continental Army) and his family from their home Anglican parish of Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia, near his Mount Vernon estate on the Potomac River, along with many other visiting notaries and delegates in future years to the soon-to-be-convened Continental Congress and the political/military leadership of the colonial rebellion. Betsy and John Ross had no children.
  The American Revolutionary War broke out when the Rosses had been married for two years. As a member of the local Pennsylvania Provincial Militia and its units from the city of Philadelphia, John Ross was assigned to guard munitions. He died in 1775. According to one legend, he was killed by a gunpowder explosion, but family sources provide doubts about this claim. The 24-year-old Elizabeth ("Betsy") continued working in the upholstery business repairing uniforms and making tents, blankets, and stuffed paper tube cartridges with musket balls for prepared packaged ammunition in 1779 for the Continental Army.
  There is speculation that Ross was the "beautiful young widow" who distracted Carl von Donop in Mount Holly, New Jersey, after the Battle of Iron Works Hill, thus keeping his forces out of 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 the Delaware River.
  On June 15, 1777, she married her second husband, mariner Joseph Ashburn. In 1780, Ashburn's ship was captured by a Royal Navy frigate and he was charged with treason (for being of British ancestry—naturalization to American colonial citizenship was not recognized) and imprisoned at Old Mill Prison in England. During this time, their first daughter, Zilla, died at the age of nine months and their second daughter, Eliza, was born. Ashburn died in the British jail.
  Three years later, in May 1783, she married John Claypoole, who had earlier met Joseph Ashburn in the English Old Mill Prison; Claypoole had informed Ross of her husband's circumstances and death.
  The couple had additionally five daughters: Clarissa, Susanna, Jane, Rachel, and Harriet (who died in infancy). With the birth of their second daughter Susanna in 1786, they moved to a larger house on Philadelphia's Second Street, settling down to a 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 president, George Washington, his vice president, John Adams, and the convening members of the new federal government and the U.S. Congress.
  In 1793, her mother, father, and sister Deborah Griscom Bolton (1743–1793) all died in another severe yellow fever epidemic (a disease unknowingly caused by infected mosquitoes). After two decades of poor health, John Claypoole died in 1817. Ross continued the upholstery business for 10 more years. Upon retirement, she moved in with her second Claypoole daughter, Susanna (1786–1875), in a section of Abington Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Her eldest Claypoole daughter, Clarissa (1785–1864), had taken over Ross's business back in the city.
caption: Certificate of the American Flag House and Betsy Ross Memorial Association, issued 1912; at left and right vignettes of the Betsy Ross House and with the then current grave site of Betsy Ross.
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