Who is traditionally credited with sewing the first American flag?

Who is traditionally credited with sewing the first American flag? Betsy Ross is the traditional answer.

Ross was a Philadelphia upholsterer who made flags, tents, and other military goods during the American Revolution. The familiar story says George Washington, Robert Morris, and George Ross asked her in 1776 to make a new flag, and that she suggested five-pointed stars instead of six-pointed ones.

The story became widely known much later. In 1870, Ross’s grandson William J. Canby presented the family account to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, decades after Ross’s death. It gained patriotic popularity around the 1876 centennial celebrations and was reinforced by paintings, schoolbooks, and tourism at the Betsy Ross House.

Historians have found no contemporary records proving that Ross designed or sewed the first national flag. Other Philadelphia flag makers, including Rebecca Young and Margaret Manny, were active at the time, and Congress did not formally describe the Stars and Stripes until the Flag Resolution of June 14, 1777. Thus, Betsy Ross is the accepted traditional attribution, not a firmly documented conclusion.