Betsy Ross lived and worked in this modest Georgian row house, the home behind one of the most persistent stories in American patriotic mythology. Betsy Ross was a Philadelphia seamstress and upholsterer who lived and worked in this house in the 1770s. The story that she sewed the first American flag based on a design brought to her by George Washington, Robert Morris, and George Ross in June 1777 was first told publicly by her grandson William Canby in 1870, nearly a century after the supposed event, based on family oral tradition.
Historians cannot confirm or deny it; there is no contemporary documentary evidence. What is documented is that Betsy Ross was a real and skilled seamstress who ran a successful upholstering business from this house, was widowed three times, belonged to a Quaker meeting, and lived a long and productive life in Philadelphia. Whether she sewed the first flag is uncertain, but she was a capable craftsperson whose story resonated with a nation looking for a female founder.
The house, a modest Georgian row house from around 1740, has been a historic site since 1898. Walk through the narrow rooms; the low ceilings and small scale give you a sense of how Philadelphia's working people actually lived.