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 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
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 HORSES 