Synopsis
An introduction to the life of the Philadelphia seamstress credited with sewing the first American flag.
Children's Literature
We may never know for certain if George Washington asked Betsy Ross to make the first American flag. Or if the seamstress suggested a rectangular banner with easier-to-cut five-pointed stars instead of the square banner with six-pointed stars he'd sketched. Robert Morris claims to have witnessed the event, however, and his account is the one author/artist Alexandra Wallner includes in her admirable young-readers' biography. The putative first-flag fashioner, thrice married and widowed, was what we, today, would call a successful small-businesswoman whose upholstery shop supported her families-no small accomplishment in Revolutionary times. Children should recognize her for that, if nothing else.