Early Life
Betsy Ross was born to Samuel Griscom and the former Rebecca James in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on January 1, 1752, the eighth of seventeen children. She grew up in a household where the plain dress and strict discipline of the Society of Friends dominated her life. She learned to sew from her great-aunt Sarah Elizabeth Ann Griscom. Her great-grandfather Andrew Griscom, a Quaker carpenter, emigrated in 1680 from England.
After she finished her schooling at a Quaker public school, her father apprenticed her to an upholsterer named William Webster. At this job, she fell in love with fellow apprentice John Ross, who was the son of Aeneas Ross (and Sarah Leach), an assistant rector at (Episcopal) Christ Church. The couple eloped in 1773 when she was 21 at Hugg's Tavern in Gloucester City, New Jersey. The marriage caused a split from her family and meant her expulsion from the Quaker congregation. The young couple soon started their own upholstery business and joined Christ Church, where their fellow congregants included George Washington and his family. Betsy and John Ross had one daughter, Sarah Ross.
Read more about this topic: Betsy Ross
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“As I went forth early on a still and frosty morning, the trees looked like airy creatures of darkness caught napping; on this side huddled together, with their gray hairs streaming, in a secluded valley which the sun had not penetrated; on that, hurrying off in Indian file along some watercourse, while the shrubs and grasses, like elves and fairies of the night, sought to hide their diminished heads in the snow.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Had I but died an hour before this chance,
I had lived a blessed time; for from this instant
There’s nothing serious in mortality.
All is but toys; renown and grace is dead,
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)