On Independence Day in 2022, 246 years after that steamy day in Philadelphia when the Declaration of Independence was signed, I've been thinking of the junior high school version of the American Revolutionary War. It was all about little factoids to memorize. Lexington and Concord, The Boston Tea Party, the 13 original colonies, the Founding Fathers - Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, the esteemed George Washington with his ill-fitting wooden false teeth. Many of those names would be in the list of Presidents we needed to memorize in order. I'm still able to start that list: Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Jackson and then it gets muddled for me. Then there was the question that Mr. Schaub assured us would be on the test ... what was a cooper?
The only woman I remember learning about was Betsy Ross. She's the woman George Washington visited with a design for a flag for the new country. After a bit of wrangling, she convinced him that the 6-pointed star he had envisioned should be a 5-pointed star. The design featured 13 stars in a blue patch with 13 alternating red and white stripes. And in that little house on a side street adjacent to Independence Hall, Betsy created the first flag.
But here's the thing: The story of this lone famous revolutionary woman is likely not true! This story surfaced during the Centennial, promoted by Ross's family based on stories carried by her children and grandchildren.
(From Encyclopedia Britannica): The first official national flag, formally approved by the Continental Congress on June 14, 1777, was the Stars and Stripes. That first Flag 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.” The layout of the stars was left undefined, and many patterns were used by flag makers. The designer of the flag—most likely Congressman Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independencem, may have had a ring of stars in mind to symbolize the new constellation. Today that pattern is popularly known as the"Betsy Ross flag" although the widely circulated story that she made the first Stars and Stripes and came up with the ring pattern is unsubstantiated. Rows of stars (4-5-4 or 3-2-3-2-3) were common, but many other variations also existed.
