12. Betsy Ross and the American Flag
During the preparations for the celebration of the centennial of the United States of America in 1876, the story first appeared of Betsy Ross creating the American flag at the request of George Washington. Ross entered American folklore as having sewn the famed flag which placed the stars representing the colonies on a blue field in a circular pattern. It had long been a part of the oral family tradition, handed down to each succeeding generation, but there was no empirical evidence to support it, and it has since been discounted by historians as a fabrication created at a time when the contributions by women to the formation of the United States were being touted by women’s suffragists and their supporters. It remains a part of American folklore.
Ross did contribute to the American Revolutionary War effort, and she did do so as, among other things, a seamstress. She was one of several Philadelphia seamstresses who contributed to the creation of the Grand Union flag, which was first raised by Washington when he assumed command of the Continental Army at Cambridge in 1775. A descendant of Ross, William Canby, declared that Ross made the first flag of the United States, but the information he provided dated the event a full year before the Congress established the design of the flag in 1777. The story of Betsy Ross is an example of an exaggerated family tradition gaining traction as history when it belongs in the realm of folklore, while the true creation of the Stars and Stripes remains obscured by its assertions.