Tag: betsy ross

National Flag Day 2025

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United States flag featured image. Source not cited.

National Flag Day takes place each year on June 14 to honor Old Glory, and commemorate the adoption of the United States flag on June 14, 1777. The holiday is a day when Americans show respect for the country’s national flag, and what it represents.

While Betsy Ross has been given credit for stitching together the first American flag, there is no sound evidence to support the story. However, there are none to challenge it either.

It seems some of the conflict arose because there were several designs being considered all at the same time. There were many flag makers during that time, and more than one claim as to whose was first. During Ross’s Revolutionary time, several standards were carried bearing red and white stripes along with varying symbols where the blue field and white stars now reside.

Our nod

Here is Hattingdon’s nod to the original U.S. flag. The hat has thirteen white stars set against a deep, dark blue rounded cap, together with a red and white striped bow below. Naturally, we named the design Betsy. Isn’t she sweet?

Betsy Hattingdon.

Flag facts

• Since 1777, the design of the United States flag has been officially modified 26 times.

• On June 24, 1912, by Executive Order of President Taft, the proportions of the flag was established, providing for the arrangement of its stars in six horizontal rows of eight each, with a single point of each star to be upward.

• On July 4, 1912, the United States flag grew to 48 stars with the addition of New Mexico (January 6th, 1912) and Arizona (February 14, 1912).

• The 48-star flag was official for 47 years, the 2nd longest length of years. Only the 50 Star Flag is longer.

• In 1959, the 49-Star version of the Flag became official on July 4th. The following month, President Eisenhower ordered the 50-Star Flag on August 21st.

• The 50-star American flag was designed by seventeen-year-old Robert G. Heft of Ohio. His was one of the more than 1,500 plus designs submitted to the President for consideration. We find the “backstory” on this fascinating. We hope you do too.

See “The High Schooler Who Designed the 50-Star American Flag“.

See also “Who Made the American Flag with 50 Stars” plus “Facts about the United States Flag” by the Smithsonian.

Updated June 17, 2025.

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Happy 4th 2023!

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Red, white and blue fireworks featured image.

Today America celebrates her birthday, and we have a hat for it . . . . naturally!

It is based on the original American flag, featuring 13 stars and 13 stripes, in honor of the 13 original colonies — and considered essential to the American Revolution.

Betsy Ross is credited with sewing the first United States flag, so we have named Hattingdon’s stars and stripes hat Betsy in Ross’s honour.

Betsy Hattingdon.

Betsy Ross

Ross has quite a story.

Betsy Ross, née Elizabeth Griscom, born January 1, 1752, Gloucester City, New Jersey, was an American seamstress who, according to family stories, fashioned and helped design the first flag of the United States.

The eighth of 17 children, she was brought up as a member of the Society of Friends, educated in Quaker schools, and became an apprentice to a Philadelphia upholsterer. However, she married another upholsterer’s apprentice, John Ross, in 1773.

By 1775 the Rosses had opened a small shop in the commercial district of Philadelphia where they lived. John was killed in January 1776 soon after he joined a local militia company to fight in the American Revolution.

Betsy continued to work as a seamstress and upholsterer. In June 1777 she married Joseph Ashburn, who would die in prison in England in 1782 after the merchant marine brigantine on which he was serving was captured during the war.

In 1783 Betsy married again, this time to John Claypoole, who had been imprisoned with Ashburn and brought the news of his death and with whom Betsy joined the newly formed Free Quakers.

Betsy ran her upholstery business with Claypoole and then for years afterward with her daughters, granddaughters, and nieces, producing flags among other objects.

Birth of the Stars and Stripes

A Henry Mosler painting titled “The Birth of the Flag” depicting Betsy Ross and her assistants sewing an American flag in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1777.
Lambert/Getty Images.

The story that Betsy Ross made and helped design the American flag began when her grandson, William Canby, presented his paper “The History of the Flag of the United States” to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1870.

According to Canby’s account, his grandmother not only made the first Stars and Stripes — at George Washington’s behest — but also helped design it.

Canby based his paper on stories that he had heard from family members, along with his own memories of his grandmother’s tales of her involvement in making flags.

The Continental Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes as the national flag of the United States on June 14, 1777.

Sources: Encyclopedia Britannica » Wikipedia » Newsweek »

Born on the 4th of July

John Calvin Coolidge was born on July 4, 1872, in Plymouth Notch, Vermont — the only U.S. President to be born on America’s Independence Day.

Hattingdon H Logo in white encircled in Hattingdon brown.

Happy Flag Day

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Blog Hattingdon Flag Day post header featuring Betsy.

In keeping with the Flag Act of 1777, Betsy Ross, an upholsterer from Philadelphia, created the earliest design for the national flag of the United States. It had red and white stripes outermost with thirteen white stars arranged in a circle against a dark blue background in its upper left hand corner.

Flag Day in the United States, now called National Flag Day, is a holiday commemorating the date in 1777 when the United States approved the Betsy Ross design for its first national flag.

First US flag, the original Stars and Stripes, created by Betsy Ross.
First US flag, the original Stars and Stripes, created by Betsy Ross.

Pres. Woodrow Wilson proclaimed June 14 as the official date for Flag Day, and in 1949 the US Congress permanently established the date as National Flag Day. The resolution read: “Resolved, that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field representing a new constellation.”

Each star represented a state and each stripe represented the 13 colonies that declared independence from Great Britain. The colors of the flag were inherited from British flags but have no official meaning.

Betsy Hattingdon

Betsy Hattingdon fashion hat inspired by original US flag.
Betsy Hattingdon.

We celebrate National Flag Day with our “Betsy” hat inspired by, and in homage to, Betsy Ross. Our design tribute has 13 stripes and 13 stars, for the 13 original colonies, later to become known as states. They were New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

Updated.

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