I look a lot like the Virgin Mary here

Michael Frisch, that professor that quizzed his students, said that I am one of the most famous American women because of my "association with our most inclusive symbols of national identity," the flag. If George Washington is the father of the country, Fisch says that "surely Betsy Ross exists symbolically as the mother, who gives birth to our collective symbol."  Then he goes on to make a fascinating comparison.  He says that in this image, I "occupy the position of  the Virgin Mary in the Christian story."  As in the biblical story of Mary, an ordinary woman "is visited by a distant god, and commanded to be the vehicle, through their collaboration, of a divine creation."  George Washington, the father of the country, asks me if I will make the nation's flag, to his design, and then I promptly "bring forth—from my lap!—the flag, the nation itself."  Fisch mentions the ray of light flooding me from behind in this image, just like religious images of the Virgin Mary.  He mentions the similarities between Washington as father and the Holy Father, and my similarities with Mary as a lowly woman, called on by higher powers, to produce something of great value.  Here's Frisch's entire article, in case you are interested:   http://www.common-place.org/vol-08/no-01/ulrich/

I DO look like Virgin Mary, with the light flooding me in the background and my hands outstretched.  Except for my clothes, which place me in another time, there are some similarities.  I produce the flag in my hands; I cradle it, like she is cradling the absent baby. 

An often-seen image of me and the American flag

This is an often-seen image of me.  I look quite young in it, although I wouldn't have been young at the time I supposedly crafted the American flag.  My grandon, William Canby, told the story of my sewing this flag 100 years after it would have taken place.  I think Will may have gotten some of the details wrong.  For one thing, I rarely sewed by myself during the daylight hours.  Most of the time my children were underfoot or other customers were around.  And my floor was always a mess -- scraps of materials always lay all around me, along with the children's toys.  Why, I'd love to have been able to have sewn all by myself in a clean room on a sunny afternoon.  How tranquil that would have been! 

I had to remarry, folks

   I told you I was married three times.  I was only 24 when John, my first husband died in an explosion.  It was bad luck: John was standing guard outside the ammunitions shed when it exploded.  I remarried only a year later to a family friend, Joseph Ashburn.  He was at sea a lot, and only five years after we married and had two children, he was captured by the British soldiers in the Revolutionary War and died as a prisoner.  John, my 3rd husband, was in captivity with Joseph. In fact, it was John who brought me the sad news that Joseph had died in captivity.  Soon after we began courting and married.  We were married 20 years, but John spent many of those years as an invalid.  I tended to his every need until the day he died. 

     You need to know that for women in my time, marriage was an economic necessity. We rarely married for "love" like you folks do now.   Back then women could not own proporty or a business such as mine -- even though it was a seamstress shop, and no man I knew could even so much as thread a needle, businesses were under the ownership of men only.  I kept my business open while I was widowed, but it was very difficult to support my six children (one of my children died as an infant) without a man to help me.  My shop brought in a living income, but I had no control over my earnings without a man to supervise me.  In some states women were forced to marry within seven years of her husband's death.  If she didn't, most folks assumed there was some problem with her and shunned her and her children.  By law I had no control of my earnings or inheritance, so I couldn't leave any money or my business to one of my daughters.  If I wanted to keep my business alive, I had to keep my standing in the community and get remarried.  If I wanted to leave any inheritance to my children, I had to be married to do so.  
       I worked hard as a seamstress and took great pride in my creations.  I was known in my town as one of the best, and this pleased me.  It was hard to keep the business going and raise children and take care of my sick husband.  Most nights I only slept a few hours.  I had to rise as soon as daylight came to begin sewing, and I sewed all day between doing my other errands and watching over my children and ill husband.  I often sewed late into the night by firelight.  Over the years my eyes got bad from doing this.  My quilts were often elaborate and required very fine stitching.  I also made party dresses for wealthy women, and this too required back-aching work.  I had no servants to help me, although when my daughters got older, they could help with some of the hemming and buttons.  
              It never occurred to me to ask if I was happy in my marriages.  Women just didn't do that. Marriage was required of women, and we made the best of it.  My 3rd husband, because of his chronic illness, was often a burden.  But it didn't occur to me that it was unfair that he was the proprietor and owner of the shop I opened before I even married him.  It was just the way things were done then, like you have things you do now that you hardly question. 
           Your children, for example, take the surname of your husband or the father of your child, and you don't often question this.  It's just the way it continues to be done.  Yet, I questioned this even in the early 1800's.  It hardly seemed fair that women had to give up their names and give their children the names of their fathers.  This is part of the reason I resumed "Ross" as my name later in life.  While it wasn't my given name, it was the name I most identified with.  A name seems important.  It is the way you trace a person's existence on earth.  My seamstress business was not important in that way.  Once I died, it was gone.  But my name lived on much longer.  I like that. 

Hi folks. Let me introduce myself. But you probably already know me.

By some crazy cyber-miracle, I have been given the power to speak in this blog, a power I certainly was never given during my lifetime.  You know me as Betsy Ross, although this name was not my given name, nor was it my name for many years of my life.

In 1989 this professor named Michael Frisch tried a famous experiment with students in his introductory American history course. At the beginning of the semester, he gave them a simple test, and asked them to write down the first ten names that came to their minds at the prompt, "American history from the beginning to the Civil War." Of course, George Washington topped the list, followed by Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and other national heroes. Then he asked them to do the same thing again, this time excluding "presidents, generals, and statesmen." In seven out of eight years, ME, Betsy Ross, was number one; no other woman even came close to me in student recall; in fact, sometimes I was the only woman included on some of the students' lists.  It's kind of heart-warming that I was the only woman students knew in American history.  And kind of ironic too, because I never thought of myself as a particularly heroic person; I wasn't even patriotic most of the time (though I kept these thoughts to myself, of course). 

I was born Betsy Griscom, one of 17 children, on Januray 1, 1752.  I lived until I was 84 -- a nice long life, so I have no complaints.  My first husband was John Ross, and my family forbid me to marry him (he was an Episcopal and I was a Quaker).  We eloped anyway, and even though I had two more husbands and I was married to my 3rd husband, John Claypool, for over 20 years, my truest love was my first John.  Notice that I kept my first John's name?  No one seems to question that fact.  If I'd taken my 3rd husband's name, you'd know me as Betsy Claypool, creator of the first American flag.  Why did I keep John Ross' name?   Why don't any of the important history scholars ask this question?

You know me as Betsy Ross.  Supposedly I made a great contribution to America by sewing that flag.  Supposedly I am one of the most famous women in American history prior to the Civil War.  Supposedly, I'm a woman to be admired because I was a great patriot and seamstress.  Yes, I was indeed a great seamstress who took pride in my work and who worked long hours in my shop and who kept my business going despite the deaths of three husbands, tending to an ill husband for two decades,  and raising seven children.  But patriot?  Creator of the American flag?  Well, that's another story.