Betsy Ross is credited with sewing the first American flag according to the traditional story.
Ross was a Philadelphia upholsterer who lived from 1752 to 1836. The familiar account says that George Washington, Robert Morris, and George Ross visited her in 1777 and asked her to make a flag from a design featuring thirteen stars and thirteen stripes. The story became widely known through a late nineteenth-century account published by her grandson, William J. Canby.
The United States did officially adopt a thirteen-star, thirteen-stripe flag on June 14, 1777. However, historians have not found conclusive contemporary evidence that Ross designed or made the first official flag. Her role is therefore a well-known tradition rather than a proven fact.
The flag’s stars represented the states in the Union, while the stripes represented the original thirteen colonies. Later flag changes added stars for new states while retaining thirteen stripes.