3X5 FT BULLDOG BETSY ROSS EMBR

BETSY ROSS FLAG FACTS

The legend that Betsy Ross helped to design and made the first stars and stripes has enormous popularity.  The facts, however, do not back it up.  This claim was made by one of her grandsons, William J. Canby, in a paper he read at a meeting of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1870.  Canby, asserted George Henry Preble, who wrote one of the most complete historis of the United States Flag could not accept the the statements made by Canby. that the stars and stripes were in common if not general use soon after the Declaration of Independence.  That was nearly a year before the resolution of Congress proclaiming the flag.  There is no record of the flag being discussed or of a committee being appointed for the design of the flag in either the Journals of the Continental Congress or the diaries and writings of Washington.  Meetings with Colonel Ross or Robert Morris on the subject are not cocumented.  When General Washington came to Philadelphia in 1776 to discuss several matters with Congress, we have some records of what he was thinking about.  The subject of flags appears in a postscript of a letter he wrote to Major General Putnam in New York, "I desire you'll speak to the several Colls. & hurry them to get their colours done".  There is no evidence to indicate that George Washington had met with and discussed a design for the stars and stripes national colors.