Who Was Betsy Ross?

Betsy Ross is considered the mother of the American flag - the symbol of the United States. But did she really sew the American flag? In this episode we look at the woman who became a symbol of the American revolution and what actually happened during her life. We also talk about whether it's important to always be factually correct about historical figures, or if it's OK to let some legends continue even if they never actually happened. Betsy Ross my or may not have been the woman who designed and sewed the original American Flag, but she was definitely an interesting person and resident of Dirt Nap City!

If you like the content we are creating and would like to support it financially, check our Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/DirtNapCityPodcast

Or, if you prefer to support us in another way, recommend an episode to one of your friends. We appreciate everyone who listens every month and look forward to making this podcast even better with your support.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello everybody, welcome to Dirt Nap City, the show about interesting people who happen to be dead, and today, Kelly, I'm breaking that rule. What? I'm talking about somebody who might not be very interesting, but the story of this person is very interesting, and I think you're gonna enjoy it. Okay. But overall, I think this person might have been a dud. Really? Yeah. So let me tell you this.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Well, hold on, let's just confirm this person is a resident of Dirt Knap City.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Oh yeah. Has been for some time.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Oh don't worry. You're in good hands here. You're in good hands. I'm looking forward to it. There are many American history professors that start their semesters off by asking the following questions of their students. They say, write down the first ten names that come to mind when I say American history from the beginning to the Civil War. And then people write down names.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Okay. George Washington and such.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Sure, sure, sure. And then they say, All right, do the same thing, but you're not allowed to put any presidents, generals, or statesmen. And this person here usually comes out on the top.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Alexander Hamilton.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

No, but that's a really good guy. But I think he was a uh a statesman. But hold on, hold on, hold on. I've giv I've I've made a riddle for you. Okay. Right. Now riddles don't have to rhyme, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:43

I was just about to ask if it rhymed, but I no, it doesn't it doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

I was I was thinking maybe I should try to make it rhyme, but all right, here we go. In the story, in the style of Dr. Seuss. No, this is not that. This is the this is the the riddle, and I think you'll get it. So I don't want to raise any red flags, but if she were around today, she might have hooked up with Lee Greenwood. Betsy Ross.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Yeah. That's good. That's good. So I don't want to raise any red flags.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

So you missed the sew part.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

So so I yeah, that yeah, yeah, that's good. That's good. No, it was a great, great clue.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Betsy Ross. Yeah. No, what do you know about Betsy Ross? You probably know exactly one thing about Betsy Ross.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Right. She sewed the American flag. And um I think No, that's all I know.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

So it's crazy. We all know this person, right? And I think we've established before, maybe in the Pilgrims episode, that uh very much of a lot of our American history knowledge comes from schoolhouse rock, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Yeah, very true.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Um, more so than probably any class that we took in high school or college. We always remember schoolhouse rock, and we can talk today about whether that's been good or bad for our generation because they've basically simplified uh American history down to its lowest common denominator and often get it pretty wrong, as we figured out with the Pilgrims episode, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:22

I think it was good for our generation because I feel like there are historical figures that you know we as Gen Xers, 50 something year olds, know the names of and know a little bit about that younger people have never even heard of. You know, I feel like we at least know, oh, I know who that is, you know.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Um sure, but American history shouldn't be about Q ratings, right? And that's basically what it's come to.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

But isn't that better than isn't that better than who the hell is that?

SPEAKER_00 3:50

You know, then then I don't know. In the case of Betsy Ross, maybe not. Because Betsy Ross didn't really sew the first American flag. What she was a pretty unnotable, unremarkable person who lived and died, and then a hundred years later everybody started talking about Betsy Ross. Wow. So let me tell you about her, please. Born in 1752 in British America, right? So what would now be uh New Jersey, maybe, and died in 1836 in Philadelphia, so part of that whole Revolutionary War crew, and she died in, like I said, in 1836. But it turns out Betsy Ross is really just a story, just like the pilgrim story, where a lot of it is kind of told from the perspective of in that case, 20th century America, in this case, 19th century America. Right, right. Nobody really knew who Betsy Ross was, or never really heard of Betsy Ross until the centennial or around 1870, leading up to the centennial of this country in 1876. So what happened was her grandson presented a paper to a historical society and claimed that in 1776, George Washington visited her, she was a seamstress, right? She made flags and such that George Washington visited her shop and gave her a rough sketch of a striped flag with 13 stars and a blue background.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Those stars had six points, and that Betsy Ross took out a piece of paper, did some folding, and folded this thing into like triangles and squares, and did did some uh origami or origami a little a little crane. With a single clip, she made a five-pointed star. And she basically told George Washington, look how easy it is to make a five-point star. I could do these all day long. Let me let me take this from here. I've got your five, your, your, your flag. Let me redesign this thing. Within days, she made the first American flag. This is the this is the legend. He had no documentation to support any of this, but he got signed affidavits from a bunch of his family members who had said that when they were younger, they had heard Betsy Ross tell this story. And that's all we're living on here is a bunch of family members saying this.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Wow. So she would she would have a few uh martinis at the Christmas party, and and I tell you what, I knew George Washington.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

None of this added up to actual historians who were saying, okay, well, why would George Washington walk into this random? First of all, there was I think he he had said there was like a a flag committee or something, and this didn't happen. There was no kind of flag. There was a lot of shady.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

It was just her grandson, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Her grandson, okay. He had made all these assertions about the way it happened, and of course he was hearing all this second and third hand, anyways. And I'm not saying he was trying to to pull a hoax off on the nation.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

Hoodwink as you were, as it was.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

I don't know if he I'm not I'm not claiming he did that, but historians who were fact-checking this stuff, and even historians today just find no evidence that this was or could have even been the case. There were other people that probably um did make the flag, but it's interesting to me. The interesting part is why is that important? Who you know what I I'm sure in other countries they don't argue about who made the first flag. That's the thing. But this is a really this was a really important part of American history. And as we'll talk about, I think it was important to have a common person at as a face of the revolution. I think it was important to have a woman as the face of this and and reflecting 19th century, not 18th century, but 19th century values about women. Um, the idea, the story of her kind of standing up to George Washington, but not 20th century or 21st century woman, basically just making a suggestion to him, you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Yeah, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

But it was like it reflected the changing role of women, adding value to the process. Absolutely. And we're talking about this is a a 19th century story, not an 18th century story. This is the story about the 18 1870s, not the 1770s, yeah. And how it kind of became part of of our world.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

That's when her grandson was alive and said all this.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Exactly. So it was one of these kind of revisionist history things that that make sense of that time, but wouldn't have made sense of the time earlier. She wasn't even really known as Betsy Ross, to tell you the truth. She was born Elizabeth Griscombe, and in 1773 she married a guy named John Ross. And then he was killed in the Revolutionary War uh just two years later, in 1775. And by 1777, she had married again to this guy, Joseph Ashburn. So she was only a Ross for like two years.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Huh.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Um, and I don't know if she went by Betsy, she might have been by Elizabeth Griscombe and then Elizabeth Ashburn and Elizabeth Clay. I don't know if she was known as Betsy Ross, but it's the same person.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

Yeah, it's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

She had these aliases or these different possible names. Well, I mean, she kept getting married. Um, she married Joseph Ashburn in 1777, and he was actually charged with treason. Um, he tried to go back to uh Britain, and because he was um fighting for the war, he was charged with treason, prison in 1780, and died in jail. Then the guy who came back and told Betsy that he died, she ended up marrying that guy, John Claypool, in 1783. So this is the guy that told her that her husband had just been killed. That's a little shady to me, too. You mean you mean from he was in the war with her husband with Ross?

SPEAKER_01 10:24

She heard him. Claypool was in in the war with Ross and came back to tell her.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Well, Ashburn was the one that died in jail, like as a prisoner of war. Um, so I don't know about Ross. He was just killed in the war. She remarried Ashburn, and Claypool was the third uh husband that she that she had. Wow. She uh her house, if you've ever been to the historical sites of Philadelphia, the Betsy Ross house is one of the most popular tourist sites in Philadelphia.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Actually, I had been there. It's it's like a very narrow, small house's kind of narrow pedestrian street.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Well, here's the bad news. We don't even think that she actually lived there. This whole thing is falling apart, isn't it? It is. Uh she might have actually lived in a house next door, but that house got torn down before the other one had been declared a historical landmark. So they kind of said, well, she lived here.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Um in 1975, in preparation for the bicentennial, they were gonna re-inter her. They were gonna dig up her bones where she was buried and then put her by the Betsy Ross house.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Oh, and let me guess, that Yale group took her. They they had stolen her bones, the skull and the skull and bones society of Yale.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Close. They went, the construction workers went, they dug her up, and there was no remains. So someone had stolen her.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Or she had never been buried there in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

They did have a family plot, and then they found through uh some scientific testing that there were some bones there that were hers, so they just threw those in the by the Betsy Ross house and basically wherever. But the whole thing is a lie, Kelly, is what I'm trying to say. Wow. She wasn't really known as Betsy Ross, she didn't live in the Betsy Ross house. She's not really buried in the uh and she might not have sewn the flag. And she probably didn't sew the flag. So when we say interesting people who happen to be dead, she wasn't interesting for like a hundred years after she died.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Right. Right. From 1776 to 1875, nobody had heard of her.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

I guess she was she died in in what eighteen thirty-six, and then people started talking about her maybe 35, 40 years later. Right. So maybe not a hundred years later, but definitely a different time.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

So really her grandson was the interesting person here, the one that the one that brought all this, you know, to the forefront. I mean, if if you could if you could make a claim about your grandmother and nobody could disprove it and it fit the American narrative, you know, you would do it, right? I would do it.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

It was the perfect story at the perfect time. When you think about it, she's really the only famous woman from the Revolutionary War. And that story is kind of a story of entrepreneurship, you know, she had her own flag um or showing seamstress shop. And the idea of standing up to George Washington is kind of a modern tale. But just like George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, American history is filled with kind of lies and half-truths and embellishments, and like I said, kind of the schoolhouse rockation of American history. It's it's an easy, kind of simplistic story to say, yeah, and then there was Betsy Ross as part of the crew, too. What she did totally fit with 19th century's changing ideas about women. Women were were um were you know the suffrage movement was starting about getting women the right to vote, and this kind of fit right in with kind of a uh American woman hero in 19 and and it didn't start getting debunked actually until the 20th century when historians were starting to not figure it out. In fact, in 1952, they came out with a postage stamp for Betsy Ross's 200th birthday, and it shows her presenting the flag to George Washington, and that was a big deal. And I think in the 19th, uh you know, in the 20th century, just like in the 19th century, we're all pretty on board with the Betsy Ross story. Um, and you know, historians often get a bad rap for trying to you know rain on people's parade, but they're just trying to get it accurate, they're just trying to figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

I was just about to say that actually, is like at what point, what good does it do to change that? You know, why, why, why rain on the parade? You know, you literally just said it. So it's it's one of those things where, okay, it's a it is a great story. It does kind of fit, it does um work in favor of women's movements and and the evolution of their role in society. Uh why change it? You know, are were you gonna tell me it was a uh white man that that sewed the flag?

SPEAKER_00 15:16

When I told my son this, that's what he said. He said it he so uh what are you gonna tell me it was a white man that uh oh he said the same thing. Yeah, he did. Uh I know I actually I think that's right. I think there's a there's a person um named uh Francis, not Scott Key, um I can't remember his name, Francis Um I had it here, but um there was an there was a guy that they think may have may have designed it. Now designing it versus sewing it, there was no one flag, obviously. There was lots of flags.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Um and depending during the war, depending on the regimen, they all had their own flags and they all looked a little bit different. Uh some of them, most of them had stars and most of them had stripes, most of them were red, white, and blue, but there was no kind of uniform flag.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

There was no mass production, there was no Pantone colors or RGB values or you know, any way to tell if that was exactly the right blue. You know, what is exactly what is the RGB value or the or the CMYK value of the blue on the flag? You know, at that time nobody knew. It was just, you know, whatever blue dye you had that was close. So there probably were a lot of iterations, uh, not just of the layout of it, but also of the colors, of the the distance between the stars. I mean, you can imagine, you know, back then that that you couldn't make it exactly the same every single time. Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

That's true. Now there is an interesting story that pe historians are more ready to accept that has nothing to do with the flag. And that's the story um right after the Battle of Trenton. Do you know who the Hessians were? Do you know anything about Hessians? No, Hessians were the German soldiers that were fighting for the with the British against the Americans in the Revolutionary War. And there was um in December of 1776, uh, there was uh uh the Battle of Trenton and uh in New Jersey, and there was a Hessian general that uh was moving his troops south uh to the Battle of Ironworks Hill. And I'm not a big Revolutionary War scholar, but uh just uh bear with me here. And he was moving his troops, uh, and um there was another Hessian group that wanted to um to support them, but Count Karl Emil Ulrich van Donup. He was uh very German, right? Very Hessian. Uh he he had uh um he had a regiment uh of uh 2,000 troops uh or uh maybe a thousand troops and uh was was uh was moving them southern and there was a there was another group that was trying that wanted to support him, but he he had like personality conflicts with that general. So he was like, I'm not gonna do that. And instead he decided to spend Christmas in the company of a beautiful young widow. And because of this, because he spent the night with this beautiful young widow, they got there late and got defeated, and and it was a very significant uh battle and war that led to Battle of Trap. And that beautiful young widow was said to be Betsy Ross. Ah so maybe didn't have anything to do with the flag, but maybe was a hero to her nation in uh in other ways.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

So she she distracted this uh Hessian general while while uh our troops moved into position, and then by the time he got there and got his belt buckled up, they were done for.

SPEAKER_00 19:07

Now let's face it, if we were to make a movie about Betsy Ross, would you have 90 minutes of somebody sewing a flag or would you focus on that part?

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Uh yeah, yeah. I think I think you could you could probably get the uh NC17 rating too, you know, if you really wanted to go controversial.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Yeah, yeah. So that's an interesting part, but they said we'll never really know about that because it's just written that it was the a beautiful young widow that distracted him, and there's some evidence, but historians disagree on that, and that's probably something like that you're never gonna get new information about. Yeah. And I don't know what her grandson had to say about that. That's something.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

Or if it was even brought up, you know.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

I mean, at the time, at the time I'm sure they had heard rumors.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Like you said, it fit the narrative so well that I imagine he was a, you know, they they probably put on a front that they were fact-checking him, but in reality, they were like, Yes, this this works so great for the 1876 celebration. Let's do it. Yeah, yeah, it's a good point.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Now, do you know what the Betsy Ross flag looks like? Can you picture that in your mind's eye?

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Yeah, wasn't it round like the star? I'm sorry, the star pattern was round, and and uh, and then otherwise it was the same? How many stars?

SPEAKER_00 20:26

13 stars, 13 stars in a circle, right? 13 original colonies. Mm-hmm. And then um alternating on a blue background, 13 white stars on the right.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

On a blue background, alternating red red and white, uh, red and white stripes.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Right, and you know what the first the top stripe is? The top is red. Red, it alternates, right. Yeah, it alternates red and white all the way down.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Um hasn't changed, right? It's still it's still uh red on the top and same number of stripes and all that.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

That's right. That's right. Uh that part hasn't changed. Now we have um, of course, we have 50 stars. Um believe it or not, a lot of people think that there's 52 stars. Some people think there's 52 states.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Because of Puerto Rico?

SPEAKER_00 21:15

I don't know, man, but a lot of people think there's 52 states in the United States.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Well, there were 48 stars for a long time, right? Yeah, so Alaska and Hawaii.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Yeah, so this is pretty interesting. So there were 13 stars until 1795, and then there were 15 stars until 1818. And then every time a new state was added, they added a new star to the flag. And it was always on July 4th when they changed the flag. So a flag would be from like and sometimes only for a year, it'd be like from July 4th on this date until July 3rd on this.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

So if a new state got accepted in January, they had to wait seven months until the new flag. Right. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

So like in 1818, there was 20 stars. And then there was like one a year. And then we had 24 stars for about 14 years from 1822 to 1836. And then a 25th for a year, and then a 26th star from 1837 to 1845. And then the longest we had any one flag for a while was we had 48 stars from 1912 to 1959. Wow. Then 49 stars when Alaska got added in 1959. And then the next year, Hawaii got added. So in 1959, there was 49 stars. But from 1912 to 1959, there were 48 stars. So there's like one year. That'd probably be cool to get a hold of the 49. If you saw a flag with 49 stars, there wouldn't be very many of them.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

There wouldn't be very many of them. I mean, not that, you know, not that that's that that it is quite a while ago, but 1960's like 10 years before we were born, yeah. 1960, uh, if if we had been born 10, 15 years earlier in Hawaii, we might not even be U.S. citizens.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Right. Yeah. There was there's been 50 stars since 1960.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

Wow. And that's um, do you know kind of how those flat those stars are arranged? How do you arrange? Is it do you think it's 10 rows of five?

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Ah, that's a great, great question. I'm looking around for a flag. I I don't know how how is it? Because they're nine alternate, right? They kind of alternate. Is that four and then five and four and five? Six and five. Six and five. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

So it's nine rows of alternating. The first row has six stars, and then alternating where it makes a like a diagonal.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

And then five stars, and then six stars.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

Like the angle of the star, if you it's like a straight line between all the angles of the stars.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

I don't know what the 49s uh I don't know if if when if they completely I guess I should have Well that could have been seven by seven.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

Yeah, I wonder if they did Isn't seven times seven forty-nine?

SPEAKER_00 24:25

Yes. You think it was as That's how I would have done it. Yeah. Well, yeah, and I wonder, uh yeah, I think the 13 was the only one that was in a circle though, and then they had to start putting them in uh in lines though.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

And I don't know if other countries are this kind of preoccupied with their uh flag or if their flag un undergoes such uh big overhauls as ours does. Ours has really have been a uh kind of a uh working document.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

But we're one of the youngest countries in the world still, right? I mean, uh a lot if you think about European countries and I I guess African countries are probably kind of younger because or you know, they weren't officially countries until more recently. But but if you think about all of Europe and well, no, I guess that's not true. There's a lot of you know newer countries, uh Istanbul is Constantinople, although I guess that's a city, not a country. So it's a song, actually. It's a song, yes. Uh yeah, it's it it is interesting that we ended up right at 50 as well. Although I, you know, I have heard a lot of people saying that Puerto Rico it kind of gets a raw deal because they're they don't have all the benefits of being a state.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

Right. And DC uh statehood is is always coming up. Is that a thing? Uh yeah, there's a lot of people that are trying to get DC statehood. So we probably wouldn't go to 51. We'd probably go to 52 if we'd probably add those two in at the same time, but I don't think that's ever going to happen. Those are uh notoriously uh uh democratic areas of the country. It would be adding two uh primarily Democrat uh um influenced states. So I think it'd be hard for Republicans to get on board with that, and that's probably the the the issue right now.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

I've even heard people uh I know someone who's from Portland, Oregon, and he said that uh there's a big group in there that you know of more conservative leaning people that that want to split Oregon in half because they feel like you know Portland is very, very liberal, but two-thirds of Oregon is very, very, or some percentage is very, very conservative. And so yeah, they don't they don't I guess but uh you know that's also a kind of interesting thing is is it better for a state to be completely red or completely blue, or is it better if there's a mix, you know, maybe do we need to gerrymander states um yeah and and call them new states? Of course, that's what happened with the Dakotas that uh that they they split into into two because that was that was such a big area of land, you know, that probably splitting into two made sense, but like Virginia and West Virginia, uh you know, that was probably more of a Civil War thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:25

Yeah, I don't know. In a lot of those cases, I think they think that they're better than one half of the state thinks they're better than the other. Yeah. I've heard people in California talk about how not north and south, but east and west, even though it's such a s small strip of land that um west part of California is a lot more liberal than the east part of California. But I I agree with you. Is that what you're trying to do? Is uh is that what you're trying to do is just create a state of like-minded people? I don't think so.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Yeah, yeah. Why why is that better? You know, why is that necessarily I mean, I guess on the surface it might seem better, but I think ultimately um having diverse thoughts within a same state might give the state some strength that it wouldn't have if if it didn't have, you know, it was all uh homogenous. But well, I am very uh surprised, shocked, and chagrined about uh about Betsy Ross or whatever her name was, Elizabeth. Uh Claypool. Claypool. Claypool, Claypool. And you know, I wonder if she's related to Les Claypool.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Wouldn't that be something? I don't think they spell it the same way, but you never know.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Yeah, wouldn't that be something? Yeah, you never know. I mean, we we know about your heritage and there's lots going on there. Well, I also uh would be interested to know what inspired her grandson to do that. You know, why why did why did he take it upon himself to fight that battle and go to the powers that be? And is that even a possible thing today, right? Could you go to the government and say, I heard this story, uh, and and you know, would it would it pass?

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Well, he didn't go to the government, he went to he he spoke at like a conference of historians. Oh, like a TED Talk kind of thing. I've got a I've got a story for you, and he knew that it was that you know, remember when we were kids in the bicentennial. Yeah, I remember the bicentennial. I remember the bicentennial quarter. The bicentennial was for those of you who weren't alive in 1976, the bicentennial just kind of took over everything. It was a big deal. It was a big deal. Drums in Fife. Yeah, I'm guessing that in 2026, when we're gonna have our bi sesquicentennial, um, we'll have something similar. That it'll be the 250th anniversary of the country. Wow, I hadn't even thought about that. Yeah, I'm sure they're they're doing things right now to to make that a big celebration, but it was a really big deal, and I'm sure that the centennial might have an even bigger deal. But yeah, so he he reported to uh to this um historical society, and then this I think there were probably reporters there, and then it just kind of took over, and like I said, it was the right story for the right time. Um, it's it you know, there wasn't a lot of American women that were considered heroic at the time, so it was just kind of like the first um uh woman American hero. So, like you say, it was kind of the probably a story that people needed to hear. Um, it's when you really think about it, it's kind of silly, anyways. That's like it's all about a flag, it's all about making the flag or designing a flag. It's um it's it's it's just this the seamstress, um but yeah, I don't know. Um seamstress for the one of those names, it's one of those names that's just everybody knows who Betsy Ross is, yeah, yeah. But nobody knows any deeper than that, and then when you start scratching deeper than that, there's not a lot there. So you would say you would rather not have anybody look into this and just say, let's just call it, let's just call this the truth.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

I'm a I'm kind of like that in a lot of areas, uh, meaning that I um yeah, I feel like there are a lot of things, there's a lot better things we could be doing with our time, right? Right.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

I mean, I just feel like unless you're a historian and that's your job.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Yeah, yeah, but even historians, I feel like I don't feel like Betsy Ross is usurping anybody or you know, I I don't know. It just feels like one of those things where why are we wasting our time on this? You know, why are we um yeah, I I would let it lie.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

This is interesting. Um, this historian, um, one of the the ones that started that experiment that I told you, um, where he asked people to name the his students to name the American heroes, he says that this story endures because it's the most inclusive symbol of national identity. That if George Washington is the father of our country, then Betsy Ross exists symbolically as the mother of the country who gives birth to our collective symbol, the American flag. In America's civil religion, she occupies the position of the Virgin Mary. Wow. Um, and that just like in the biblical story uh uh of Mary in the Betsy Ross legend, an ordinary woman is visited by a distant god and commanded uh to you know make this flag, and that whenever you have a a little little kid doing the pageants of American history, you always have George Washington visiting a humble seamstress in a tiny home and asking if she will make the nation's flag, and then she brings forth from her lap the flag and the promise of freedom, and that it's like a it's a it's a legend that just keeps building and building. Um so from your perspective, ignorance is bliss, and we don't really need to know the uh the truth.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

Um yes, plus plus, like I said, maybe we could focus on things that are that are more important. But you know, that's a very that's a very subjective thing, right? I'm actually sitting here, I seem to recall that there was a Beastie Boys lyric about Betsy Ross somewhere. Uh and I can't, I can't, I'm I'm looking for the I'm looking for it. If anybody knows it, send it send it to not at dirtnapcity.com, please, because um, you know, I know Paul Revere, of course, they talk about him. Uh they talk about Colonel Sanders. I've just know there's a Betsy Ross reference in a Beastie Boy song. And that's kind of when I feel like you've really made it, is when you um when you are included in a famous rap song.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

Yeah, absolutely. Like uh Sadahara oh.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

Yeah, Sadahara baseball player, right? Yeah, yeah, got more hits than Sadahara O. Well, Alex, this was great. This was quite unexpected, as you said. It broke a little bit of a rule, but I think what's interesting is the interesting person is not the person herself, it's the uh the story that was told. The legend, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:32

The legend about the story. Yeah, and she was very much a real person, but I would think that in her own time, she wasn't not that we had people called celebrities too much back then, but I would say she was not a household uh name that anybody knew. I would guess that if you talk to people that were contemporaries of hers and nobody had ever heard of Betsy Ross, and it wasn't till you know, school children in the centennial and the bicentennial, but now everybody knows who Betsy Ross is.

SPEAKER_01 35:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, well done. Well done, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 35:06

Do you know the the only flag in the world that doesn't have four sides?

SPEAKER_01 35:12

The only like it's a different shape?

SPEAKER_00 35:15

Um it's like two triangles on top of each other.

SPEAKER_01 35:19

No, is it like a semaphore flag?

SPEAKER_00 35:23

Nepal. Yeah, it kind of looks like a semaphore flag, yeah. And then there's two flags in the world that are actually square, they aren't rectangles.

SPEAKER_01 35:30

Okay. Uh hold on, hold on. Um I was gonna say Switzerland, but that's not right.

SPEAKER_00 35:38

Yes, yes, that is right. Switzerland? Oh, okay. All right, so then and and the Vatican. And the Vatican, which is the smallest uh country in the world.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

Wasn't that wasn't that an 80s sitcom uh square flags? Oh no, square pegs. Pegs, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

Uh the the rarest country on a flag is purple. There's only two flags in the world that have purple in them because that's usually a color of royalty.

SPEAKER_01 36:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Um, and it's I'm gonna say Uruguay and Andorra. Nicaragua and um uh Dominica.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:18

And then the oldest flag in the world uh is Denmark. Wow. Um the uh Danish flag was first used in 1625, but they actually think the design was created in 1219. Wow. That is that is a grand old flag, as they say. Now this you you know what the n what we call our flag here Old Glory.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Or Stars and Stripes. Or uh it's the same name as our song.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

Uh Star Spangled Banner. Right, the Star Spangled Banner. And actually, um that was one of the giveaways that when the the grandson was said, uh and my uh grandmother, she said she I'd be honored to to uh to make the Star Spangled Banner.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

Right because they hadn't they didn't start calling it that wasn't it like Francis Scott Key wrote wrote that as part of the lyrics uh to the national anthem, right? Right, right. But did everybody call it that, or was that something Francis Scott Key came up with?

SPEAKER_00 37:28

Not until like um way later, like 1812 or something, where people started calling it that. So that was like one of the giveaways that uh the telltale sign that someone was lying. Now they have the Betsy Ross flag in um on display at uh I I believe in at Independence Hall. Uh no, I think it's in in the Smithsonian, actually, the Betsy Ross flag. And I've visited that uh that flag.

SPEAKER_01 37:55

And it's supposed to have been sewn by Betsy Ross.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

Yeah, they call it the Betsy Ross flag. I don't um and interestingly enough, if you go to the U.S. Department of the Interior website, they still you know it's the Betsy Ross story. This flag was created by Betsy Ross. They tell that story still on the in the official US government website about the American flag. So wait, the government lied about our history? What the official party line for the US government is still that Betsy Ross made the the flag, and that's their and they're probably not changing it anytime soon. Yeah. But now you're you seem to be uh calling that a lie and saying that our government is lying, but you just advocated for that not ten minutes ago.

SPEAKER_01 38:42

I well, no, no, I I think there's a time and a place where um just sticking with the status quo is the right thing to do, but I know that's probably a very controversial uh statement, but I don't know. Again, it just feels like something that has such little real significance to the world today that why mess with it? Why not focus on other things? You know, I would not want to lie about the way we treated certain people in the past, the way the government treated certain people, or institutional racism, or you know, war crimes or anything like that. That feels more important to me. But who sewed the first flag? Eh.

SPEAKER_00 39:22

You know, you heard it. You heard it, folks. Kelly's into uh lying to the uh endorses people lying to government lying to people.

SPEAKER_01 39:31

The lion does not uh concern itself with the opinions of the sheep.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

There you go. All right, Kelly. Well, that was the Betsy Ross episode. Uh R.I.P. Betsy.

SPEAKER_01 39:43

R.I.P. Betsy, Elizabeth, um, Claypool, Ross, whatever your name was.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

And wherever you rest.

SPEAKER_01 39:53

Wherever your bones are. Yeah, I wonder if you can I wonder if you can move to Dirtnap City if your bones are spread all over. I think you can.

SPEAKER_00 40:00

I think you can.

SPEAKER_01 40:01

Just get a wheelchair or something. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 40:03

Sure. But if there's a flag for city, uh, chances are she's uh her grandson is claiming that she made it.

SPEAKER_01 40:11

That's right. And he probably lives in Dirt Knap City as well.

unknown 40:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:14

All right, man. Well, thank you. That was awesome.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

All right. Well, thanks everybody for listening and uh tune in for next time for an exciting episode of somebody who may or may not be interesting.