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On May 29, 1777, Betsy was paid a large sum of money from the Pennsylvania State Navy Board for making flags. On June 14, 1777, Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes as our official national flag.
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June 14th is Flag Day.
Betsy Ross, nee Elizabeth Griscom, was born into a middle class Quaker family. Betsy was educated at a Quaker school then apprenticed to an upholsterer where she met her first husband John Ross, a fellow apprentice. Subsequently, she was “read out” for marrying outside her faith. The Revolutionary War took its toll on the couple: the upholstery business struggled and then John was killed while serving in the Pennsylvania militia. John was not the only husband she would lose to the cause. Eventually she married her third husband John Claypoole. The couple were members of the Free Quaker congregation. She bore six daughters, five of whom survived infancy and went on to take over the upholstery business.
Presenter: Kim Hanley as Betsy Ross portrays an ultimately successful, if not hugely wealthy, woman able to maintain a business under the most difficult of conditions. This woman, one of the most popular characters in American history books, gained fame she would never have sought as a Quaker woman for creating the first American flag. But, Hanley shows us why Ross should be celebrated for being a woman participating in the workforce, for raising five daughters, and for supporting the Revolutionary Cause. Ms. Hanley helps her audience understand and relate to the Quaker faith, and to appreciate women’s work in the 18th century. Kim Hanley is a gifted costumer and seamstress in her own right and demonstrates how Betsy Ross deftly reproduced a 5-pointed star with a single cut. By tracing the American flag’s historical components, Ms. Hanley gives our flag, and our country, its place on the continuum of history.
Kim Hanley: Kim’s academic training includes a BFA in Restoration and History of Applied Arts from the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York. She is an actor, singer, costumer and dancer who trained and performed from an early age with the School of American Ballet and the Eglevsky Ballet in New York, as well as with the visiting Bolshoi Ballet, and Stuttgart Ballet. Ms. Hanley is also an accomplished costumer whose specialty is historical fashion. She has costumed for many of the nation’s top historical interpreters and historical sites such as George Washington’s Mount Vernon.
At the conclusion of the program please feel free to take a brief online survey here:
https://www.projectoutcome.org/responses/61918
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