Betsy Ross House

This guide to the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia opens with a question: why does America's most famous flag story rest on one grandson's word, spoken almost a century after it supposedly happened. It walks through what William Canby told the Pennsylvania Historical Society in eighteen seventy about his grandmother sewing the first Stars and Stripes for George Washington, Robert Morris and George Ross in this very parlor, and the total absence of any contemporary paper trail. You'll also hear about the flag contracts Betsy Ross did provably sign for Pennsylvania's Navy Board years later.