Betsy ross early life education

Betsy Ross, best known for making the first American flag, apprenticed with an upholsterer before irrevocably splitting with her family to marry outside the Quaker religion. She and her first husband, John Ross, started their own upholstery business.

Betsy ross husband

Despite a lack of credible evidence to support it, legend holds that President George Washington requested that Ross make the first American flag. Betsy Ross, best known for making the first American flag, was born Elizabeth Griscom in Philadelphia on January 1, A fourth-generation American and the great-granddaughter of a carpenter who had arrived in New Jersey in from England, Ross was the eighth of 17 children.

Like her sisters, she attended Quaker schools and learned sewing and other crafts common in her day. After Ross completed her schooling, her father apprenticed her to a local upholsterer, where, at age 17, she met John Ross, an Anglican. To the shock of their families, Betsy and John married in , and she was promptly expelled from both her family and the Friends meeting house in Philadelphia that served as a place of worship for Quakers.

Betsy ross accomplishments

In , at the start of the American Revolution, John was killed by a gunpowder explosion while on militia duty at the Philadelphia waterfront. Following his death, Ross acquired his property and kept up the upholstery business, working day and night to make flags for Pennsylvania. A year later, Ross married Joseph Ashburn, a sailor.

Ashburn, however, also met an unfortunate end. In , the ship he was on was captured by the British, and he died in prison the next year. In , Ross married for a third and final time. John died 34 years later, in , after a long disability. Ross died on January 30, , at the age of 84, in Philadelphia. Nearly 50 years later, her grandson publicly shared that Ross made the first American flag.